Week 1 - Belvedere Palace
Well here we go again, another 53 weeks lie ahead of us.
If anything this next period will be more difficult than the first, if only because doing something again is often more difficult than setting out to do something the first time.
They say you should start as you mean to go on, so at the last minute on the Sunday afternoon (before the light faded), I walked up to the Belvedere Palace to shoot this.
In the vein of new beginnings, I promised myself I'd start diversifying my posts. Not because books I've started running out of things to say. Believe me, I think most of the people in my life once in a while hope I do run out of things to say...But because, although I've already read 6 books this year and I'm chugging along with my resolution to read 100 books this year, I have to acknowledge the change in my reading style over the years. I no longer wish to maintain the segmentation of my reading from my life. In fact, it's not an entirely sustainable scheme. Eventually things you read start informing your daily life and your daily life obviously informs your reading choices.
With that in mind, I am sharing this gorgeous and stately picture of the Belvedere Palace in Potsdam. Sad I didn't get to see this when I was there a few years ago. Although, can't complain as I was able to visit Sans Souci.
[caption id="attachment_1331" align="aligncenter" width="538" caption="Sans Souci Palace is the place that Frederick the Great used to retreat to. Sans Souci means "no worries" in French."]
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Lately, I've been thinking about the places that my reading has allowed me to travel and how books have ignited my curiosity for the world.
I do think, that as a kid and even through high school I buried my head in a pile of books desperately hoping not to be noticed and trying to stave off as much expectation from people about my personality or beauty or other things I was not so sure of as a high schooler with frizzy hair, braces and giant eyebrows. I shielded myself from critique by becoming an overachieving student. What's the worst people could say about a bookworm?
Oh she reads too much.
That didn't seem too harsh....
But strangely enough, it was those books that made me realize what I was missing out on. There is just so much world to see, so many people to meet and so much to learn. And so, it was that I was lured out of my bookish caverns to go out to the world, book under my arm, of course. Granted, I'm not much of an adventurer or thrill seeker. I am so easily consoled by new experiences that for me discovering a new aisle in the grocery store is magnificent. Truth be told, there are still a lot of days when I prefer the comfort of my couch, a hot cup of tea, and a good book. However, I think that this has now become a choice formulated from my enjoyment of reading and not because I wish to hide from people.
In fact, as I was looking around the web for some literary genius to fortify my sense of nostalgia, I ran into this quote:
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac
Even if I don't get to go to Potsdam again or see the Belvedere or get the same guilty pull in my gut when I look at lost opportunities in my travels, I have to retract those feelings.
I'm just glad I have seen a little bit of the whole wide world.
