When I first married my husband on a beach in Benin, he had a job that required him to travel all over west Africa. A decade later he covered 28 countries in southern Africa. I rarely went with him on these trips mostly because they were work trips and partly because I had a little kid at home and partly because I wasn't all that interested in staying in a grim hotel room in Malawi while he was at meetings all day long.
When we moved to Rome his job changed, his travel docket came to an abrupt stop and he has been home for the last ten years. As is the case with most things you grow accustomed to, things change. All of a sudden he is traveling again for work. Instead of African capitals, though there are still a few of those on his to do list, he also gets asked to go to meetings in European capitals. Noah is away at school, my work is flexible and Mark is finally going to places where I am happy to tag along. A few weeks ago he had a couple of days of meetings in Budapest. For some reason this European city was not really on my radar. I guess that a lack of coastline had somehow struck it off the list in my mind. Let me be the one to tell you if it is not there already put Budapest on your radar. It is beautiful, easy, affordable and delicious.
My overseas life as an adult began in Niger, a dusty expanse of the Sahel just south of the Sahara. I went there somewhat blindly and very unexperienced and I was younger than most of my colleagues by about a decade. That meant that I made friends with the young marines who guarded the US Embassy and with Peace Corps volunteers. Both of these groups of people have had a profound effect on my life aside from my not being a member of either group. I met my husband at a Friday movie night at the Marine House and Peace Corps volunteers have been our friends and colleagues for the many decades that have passed in between those hot sandy days and our current life in Rome.
We have now reached that point in adulthood where our friends children are are graduating from college and making their first steps into their grown-up futures. A few nights ago a colleague of Mark’s invited us to dinner to share our wisdom about life in west Africa with his son who is about to leave for his Peace Corps assignment. Dinner was planned at a restaurant across the street from their house, which I have to say a quick word about. They live on the Appia Antica, one of the oldest roads in Rome, and the apartment is inside the mausoleum of Emperor Caracalla's brother. Only in Rome.
