August 14-16: Chamonix, France
August 22-23: Montreal, Canada
ust 23-September 3: Mattituck and NYC, USAAbout 2 weeks ago I updated my profile on the travel website couchsurfing.org. It's a website created for travelers who would prefer to stay at someone's home than in a hotel, and supported by people who don't mind hosting a few nomads for a night or two on their couch. I had been registered on the site for about 2 years already without ever having explored it. When my good friend Cynthia registered herself on the site and reminded me of its existence I decided to give it a second try. Familiarizing myself with what the site is about and what kind of people are signed up, I quickly realized that this is totally up my alley. Meeting foreigners? Check. Being hospitable? Check. Possibly making a new friend or two? Double check. I got to work on my profile page, posting some pictures from my travels and some of me just doing my thing here in Milan. Added what languages I speak, some of my interests, and a blurb about myself and what kind of people I enjoy meeting, and most importantly, I changed the status of my couch to "available". I kid you not: within minutes of my profile update my email inbox was receiving so many requests to sleep on my couch that I didn't even have time to respond to all of them. Since the update, I have been receiving about 20 email requests per day from travelers all over the world to sleep on my couch! I never knew it was such a desirable destination.
I love the idea of hosting people. Even if at the moment I myself am not out exploring the world I can always live vicariously through the stories of others, and even hope that when I do put my traveling boots back on that someday, somewhere, someone might just return the favor. Through all these requests I decided to ease myself into this whole couchsurfing phenomenon by accepting to host a young American woman working as an aupair in Berlin, traveling through Milan for a night on a vacation in Italy. She's arriving next weekend, which worked out well because I knew my roommate Maria wouldn't be around as I didn't want to intrude by inviting strangers into our home. When I told Maria about our future visitor her reaction was, "Oh it's such a shame I won't be here then to meet her!" Little did I know that Maria's also registered on couchsurfing, and has already done some surfing of her own in Barcelona. Judging by her reaction I thought it'd be fine to ask her if we can host other people, and so last night we had our first couchsurfers stay in our living room!
Three 20 year old Swedish guys from Gothenburg spent the night at our apartment and I was proud to introduce them to Milan by way of an aperitivo. In addition, we also have a cat who's couchsurfing this week as our friend went away on vacation! So our house is full of surfers!
In the next few weeks before I go on vacation we'll be having lots more couchsurfers… so stay tuned for some updates!
Dating in
Don’t ask me how it happened, but this week I found myself with 4 invitations for aperitivo from 4 different people. I’m a big fan of aperitivo, but does it get old if you do it every night of the week? I suppose I’ll let you know when the week is up…
That being said… suggestions for a 2nd date that are not aperitivo-related are very welcome!
I did it. I’ve arrived at the quarter century mark.
Yesterday was my 25th birthday. It seems to be a remarkable number of years, judging from reactions I’ve been getting from birthday well-wishers. Some, like my colleague Alessandro, can’t understand why I’m happy to celebrate my birthday. “Ogni volta che compili gli anni vuol dire che hai uno meno da vivere” or in English, “Every year you celebrate another birthday it just means you have one year less to live.” His reasoning leads him to the conclusion that each birthday should be a mournful event, remembering the year gone by and grieving its loss. Hmm! Interesting, but I can’t say I agree. In my opinion, every birthday you have means that you’ve done well enough to keep yourself alive another year, which should certainly be celebrated. I mean it’s easy enough to live to be 5, you don’t really need to do that much considering you probably have someone looking out for you: giving you food, shelter, putting bandaids on your scraped knees, and making sure you get your vaccinations. But when you’re 25? Seems like the number of things to take care of grew exponentially from when I was 5, and what’s worse, I’m expected at this point to be able to take care of them myself. So far I’ve managed quite well, which is why I decided yesterday was a day to celebrate!
Hitting the ¼ century mark I somehow feel like I’ve entered adulthood. Not that anything in my life has changed, mind you, but it’s just something about that number, 25, that seems so grown-up. That’s why this year for my birthday 
bash we (my friends Maria, Cynthia, and I) decided it was time to kick-it up a notch and make the theme of the party “Creative Black Tie.” I figured at 25 it was about time I wear my first tie, and what better way to do so than in the company of my equally dressed peers?
Here are some shot
s taken at the party, e
njoy! 
Last weekend, from Saturday until early Monday morning, I was in Warsaw, Poland. Accompanied by one of my favorite travel buddies, Salma, we set out to get a taste for this historically important city. Saturday was awesome, we left the hotel and walked down one of the main streets, Marszalkowska, until we reached a suitable place to have some lunch. Although it was a little on the heavy side compared to the Italian food I'm used to these days, the lunch was amazing. We ate potato and cheese filled pierogi, ground meat wrapped in cabbage leaves (closely resembling the Swedish kåldolmar), and little patties of fried cheese served with lingonberry jam, while sipping mugs of blackcurrant juice. Yum! 
After lunch we wandered through a street fair on Nowy Swiat and over to the old town, or Stare Miasto. In a city that was 90 % demolished by the Nazis during WWII and wasn't rebuilt until the 1970s the old town is drastically different than the majority of the city. Walking around the rest of the city, with its wide streets and sidewalks, modern apartment buildings and lack of the cobble-stone streets so abundant in most European cities, you feel like you could be in Ottawa or some other North American metropolis. When you walk down Nowy Swiat towards the old town, however, this sensation melts away as you approach the old, colorful 4-story buildings on the horizon, pass cathedrals dating back to the 13th century, and wave hello to the monument of Copernicus.
We reached a square lined with quirky colorful buildings on all sides just as it started to drizzle and were able to listen to a few songs from an outdoor jazz concert. Just as the rain let up we sat a beautiful rainbow stretch across the sk
y, which you'll see in the photo to the left..
After the jazz concert we continued exploring the city. Salma and I only see each other for the occasional weekend here and there about every 2 months or so, so most of our time spent together consists of catching up on news and filling each other in on the goings-on in our lives. Wrapped up in one of these types of discussions and oblivious to stoplights Salma and I stepped off of the curb to cross the street when our light was red, just as 2 Polish police officers were biking by (looking very threatening indeed). They stopped cycling across the street from us, waiting for us to approach. As we made it to the other side of the street I knew they were going to comment on our J-walking, but I didn't know the conversation would go something like this:
Cycling police officer #1: (says something in Polish, clearly unhappy with us)
Jasmin: "English?"
The 1st cycling police officer calls over the 2nd, who confidently strides over to us to use his English skills.
Cycling police officer #2: "Did not you see light is red?"
Jasmin: "Ummm, yes. There were no cars coming though."
Cycling police officer #2: "Walk red dangerous. Car, you fly! Watch the zebras! Look zebras. This time you go."
Salma and Jasmin: "Uhh, ok. Thanks officer."
If you had trouble understanding that interaction you're not alone. It left Salma and I laughing for blocks, even if I was pretty paranoid that I'd end up in Polish prison for the weekend (probably the law-abiding Swede in me). After consideration we figured the zebras he was referring to were actually the black and white striped crosswalks.
Anyway, if you go to Warsaw, watch out for the zebras or the police might be on your back. You've been warned.
