I arrived back in Oxford on Monday afternoon, after almost three weeks of various travels to London, Helsinki, Tel Aviv, Barcelona, and Madrid. My feelings about being home can’t be described as anything other than complete and utter relief.

The contented sigh inevitably following a return home from vacation has always struck me as the validation of the opening passage of The Phantom Tollbooth:

There once was a boy named Milo who didn’t know what to do with himself — not just sometimes, but always.

When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he’d bothered.

I worry, sometimes, that my feeling of always wanting to be somewhere else, even when you’re exactly where, ten minutes ago, you wanted to be, is representative of more than just the usual discontent/wanderlust of the Generation Facebook twentysomething. For instance, despite having a truly excellent trip to Spain with my sister, I found myself more holistically satisfied once I arrived at home and was able to unpack, shower, and eat dinner at a familiar restaurant. It’s almost certainly not a problem to appreciate the familiar; but I’m concerned that sometimes, I don’t appreciate the unusual (especially re: traveling) quite enough.

Of course, being unsettled while on my particular vacations this spring is hardly surprising, given the destinations and cirucmstances. In London, I discovered that having the wrong travel companion can render me utterly unable to function, even with regards to the most elementary decisions of what to do or where to eat. In Israel and Spain, I discovered that I’m extremely uncomfortable when I’m somewhere where I don’t speak the native language fluently — even as, in both countries, I had at least a passing acquaintance with Hebrew and Spanish respectively. (I’m conversationally fluent in Hebrew, for that matter, though my lack of public confidence with the language led to me speaking in a quiet mumble the entire time I was in Israel.)

And, for the duration of the trip, I realized that I don’t function well when I’m denied the telecommunications lifeline of my iPhone. Not being able to instantly receive notifications of new e-mail or Twitter mentions stressed me out very fundamentally, and to a greater degree than I really expected. (This has brought back to mind my usual concerns about being over-connected, although at this point I hardly see a way to break that particular pattern.)

Being in Oxford again the past three days has brought back a lot of my usual routine, albeit with a somewhat improved spin. I’m actively appreciating things like 3G data, the functioning of the Oxford library system, and the fact that I don’t pay a 2 percent surcharge when I use my credit card in a way that I didn’t before I left the country. Maybe that, ultimately, is why we go on vacation: so that, when we can look at our day to day lives with some measure of critical distance, we realize that it’s not actually that terrible after all.

Note: Apologies for anyone seeing this for the second time. I recently changed servers, and two posts got lost in the process. This was one of them.

As an impromptu pre-vacation vacation, I spent this past Monday and Tuesday in London, soaking in the city and doing a bit of shopping. Various thoughts:

I took the train from London to Oxford, rather than the usual WiFi-enabled Oxford Tube. It was my first journey of any significant distance by train (SEPTA Regional Rail service within Philadelphia definitely doesn’t count, though I’ve had SEPTA trips that have been longer, in terms of time spent on board), and I’ve realized that I rather like the experience of being on a train. Despite sitting in front of a group of three loud Americans (a dad and his sons, I think) who would see smokestacks in the distance and exclaim, so the entire car could hear them, “Look! A nu-cu-lar plant!” I found it on the whole a great deal less objectionable than flying or taking a bus. Maybe Amtrak was right in their latest Acela commercial.

Monday was largely spent walking around London, feeling lost and very alone. I had to charge my phone three times over the course of the afternoon, because I spent most of the day talking internationally, out of a desperate attempt to retain a connection to something familiar. Taking on London solo, it turns out, isn’t for me.

There’s something misleadingly reassuring about rubbing your wallet on an Oyster terminal and seeing the gates fly open — as if, simply by possessing an RFID tag, you become a local. Traveling between Underground stations, ultimately, was where I felt the most at peace for the whole trip.

I saw the opera Katya Kabanova (by Janacek) with Chris on Monday evening, and afterwards had a few drinks at a pub next to the infamous G-A-Y Bar. The pub itself was lovely — I’m perpetually amazed by the ability of British drinking establishments to play things like Fuck Buttons or Four Tet and have it be totally normal — but the location reignited my internal debate over gay bars/clubs. I’ve never been to one, in Philadelphia or elsewhere, and I can’t decide if I actually want to. I don’t know what I’m more worried about: that it’ll be decrepit and everything I’m afraid of, or that I’ll actually enjoy it.

Tuesday morning, en route to the bus to return Chris to Oxford, we passed a memorial for animals in war. In the afternoon, I intended to visit two other memorials, both for Princess Diana: one in Hyde Park, where water flows in improbable directions; and one in Harrods, where disposable income flows in entirely probable directions. I made it to neither, but instead found my way to the Marc by Marc Jacobs in Mayfair, where I proceeded to buy a bunch of shirts in the wrong size that will have to be exchanged when I’m back in London on Sunday.

By the second day, London started feeling a little more familiar, at least insofar as I’d gotten a few hours of sleep, had a couple of cups of coffee, and was somewhat better hydrated.

Just around the corner from what I discovered was the Mozambican embassy, I met up with a friend for lunch at the Indian YMCA, which I didn’t realize was even a possibility. Some mediocre Indian food and a few hours later, I ran into yet another Swarthmore student at a University of London School of Oriental and African Studies common room, once more confirming that it’s actually impossible to go anywhere without encountering, unplanned, someone who is or recently was a student at Swarthmore.

Despite buying a £4 advance ticket for 8.50pm, I tried to catch an earlier train back to Oxford out of sheer exhaustion and an overwhelming desire for familiar surroundings. When a last-minute ticket turned out to cost just shy of £20, I sat down at a conveyor belt, ate sushi, and finally surrendered any reluctance I may have once had to talk on the phone while eating in public. Despite a pedestrian being run over by a First Great Western train along the route I was traveling, I made it home on time and mostly unharmed.

So went my first solo trip to London.

I don’t smoke cigarettes. I never have. “Too unhealthy,” I always tell myself. “They yellow your teeth. Lung cancer. Gum cancer. Cheek cancer. I don’t want to die young.” Even still, every time I pass someone smoking a cigarette, I pause, breathe in a lungful of second-hand carcinogens, and let my mind wander for a minute.

I think about the man with the pipe my father and I would always pass when walking through the neighborhood I grew up in. I looked at his house on Google Maps the other day. The whole neighborhood is different now, of course. I think about how I still really like the smell of pipe tobacco.

I think about the time — I must have been five or six — when my parents registered me for day camp at a water park in Haifa, and I refused to go after the second day because my counselor chain-smoked. Ruchaleh ha’Meashenet, I called her; Ruchaleh the Smoker.

I think about the guy with the Andy Warhol banana tattooed on his chest and the afternoon we spent lying on South Beach in Miami talking about My Bloody Valentine. I remember feeling so grown up, even though I couldn’t have been more than 16. When I was going through my gmail account a few weeks ago, I reread the e-mail I sent telling him that we weren’t going to work. I never admitted it, but it was because I hated the taste of kissing him after he smoked. I contacted him on Facebook a few months ago and never got a response.

I think about my high school friends and the time they burnt off bits of my arm hair with a BIC lighter during lunch. Anndal, the one with the dreadlocks, and Tessa, her girlfriend. I never particularly liked the smell of clove cigarettes they all smoked. I remember sitting under the big tree near the bus loop at the old Atlantic High School campus, and the fight I had there with someone that, years before, I’d bitten. Actually bitten. Malcolm, sweet and “straight.” Meghan, and the chocolate muffin I spat out when I remembered that it was Passover and I shouldn’t be eating muffins.

I think about what I find aesthetically pleasing about smoking cigarettes, and about how I’d do it. I’d roll it myself and hold it, decisively, between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. I wouldn’t feel strange walking through the park alone anymore. People who walk and smoke have a purpose — they’re smoking. People who just walk are clearly depressives with too much time on their hands.

I think about the first time I felt something for a boy from class at Swarthmore. I remember pretending to be bad at physics. He smoked, of course; big, unromantic American cigarettes, whatever brand was cheapest. Camel. Marlboro. Parliament.

I think about the time I put my arm around someone’s waist at a party, and then didn’t follow up on it. I tapped my feet to Nine Inch Nails in the basement of the Barn for hours, until I walked home, sober and annoyed with myself, some time around 3 in the morning. I remember the black snot the next day.

And then, even though only a few seconds have gone by, the smell is gone and I snap out of it and keep walking.

It’s been an interesting season of television. Jumping right into it:

When Glee first went on hiatus, I picked up Fringe as a solution to my lack of television. As with most things J.J. Abrams, it’s a mixed bag. While I recognize that it’s the highest form of sacrilege to insult Lost right now, I couldn’t stand it beyond the first episode of the second season. I handled the smoke monster and the shrieking noises and some quantity of supernatural bullshit; but, considering where the show’s gone from there, I’m glad I got out when I did.

Which isn’t to say that Fringe is a vast departure. The Observers walk across random shots, irritatingly out of focus so you never know whether you’re hallucinating their presence or not, and the mysterious apples and puffs of smoke at commercial breaks are a total crock of shit. Oh, and then there’s all the gratuitous, gut-churning nastiness that masquerades as a plot. For instance, there’s this delightful intestinal parasite of everyone’s fucking worst nightmares:

And yet, I can’t stop watching, which speaks to the show’s overall quality. I described it to someone as the X-Files of the 2000s, and I think that still stands. It’s like J.J. Abrams took all the ideas he had for Lost and, instead of trying to apply them where they clearly Make No Fucking Sense (ie. an island), he put them in downtown Boston with the premise that weird shit is de rigueur for the northeast. Somehow, it works.

And then there’s Modern Family.

On the behalf of anyone who has ever encountered a gay stereotype, I’d like to congratulate ABC and the show’s producers for managing to squeeze each and every one of them into a single couple. That takes serious dedication! A neurotic, slightly cubbish lawyer and his oversized queen of a partner who seems to do nothing but wear paisley and mince around carrying — dear god, does our suffering know no bounds?! — their adopted generically-Asian baby? How groundbreaking.

But the show succeeds in a huge way despite its heavy reliance on clichés, at least in the sense that I can’t stop watching it. A friend described it as the show for people who miss Arrested Development, which is right, to an extent. It uses the same brand of hyperbolic humor that made Arrested Development delightful, but without requiring you to be on the inside of an increasingly complex web of jokes to understand what’s going on. Every episode is pleasantly self-contained, and as a half-hour program, I can’t really ask for more. Except, maybe, for Phil’s death, because he’s not funny at all and occasionally makes me pause the episode I’m watching because he’s so fucking annoying DIE DIE DIE.

In other news, this season of Project Runway is continuing the precedent established last year of keeping everything conceptually the same as the show at its peak but somehow managing to make every episode into a struggle to stay awake. I remember the episodes by the quantity of liquor and dessert it took for me to make it through all 42 minutes. Designing a dress for Heidi? Two screwdrivers and a slice of banana bread. The kids challenge? A very large gin and tonic and six oatmeal-raisin cookies. The one where Anthony was a contrived amalgamation of every negative stereotype of both Southern and gay people? Oh, wait, that’s every episode.

And, lest we forget, Grey’s Anatomy is still trundling along. Except I’m so colossally underwhelmed by this season — even as it manages to eliminate everything that used to annoy me about the show, including but not limited to Izzie, George, and the constant Deredith drama — that I can’t even think of anything especially snarky to say about it. Does no one remember how to make this show good anymore? All the competent writers must have encountered the Superfund site that is Private Practice and died or something, because there’s really no other explanation.

I’ve been pretty quiet on here lately, mostly as a result of this term being extremely busy, and extremely boring. Various thoughts on things (social networking sites! gays! iPhones!) will come shortly, but first, my travel itinerary for the upcoming break and a plea for advice:

Whereas most of the Americans on the Sarah Lawrence program took advantage of the winter vacation to travel around Europe, staying in dirty hostels and buying kitschy bullshit to scatter around their apartments (see also: a totally impractical stovetop espresso maker that does little other than make a colossal mess when, every other time it’s used, it tips over on the burner and spills brown water everywhere), I went back to Florida and worked at Apple. The upside was that, financially, this puts me in a much better position this term. The downside is that, as far as seeing Europe inexpensively is concerned, I haven’t done much.

This time around, I have a different plan:

21 March — 22 March: London
23 March — 24 March: Helsinki
25 March — 27 March: London
28 March — 5 April: Israel (for Passover)
6 April — 11 April: Spain

Thus far, my plans for London and Helsinki are pretty well-established, but, having been tasked with planning a five day trip in Spain between Barcelona and Madrid, I have no idea where to even begin. Advice or recommendations on places to stay/eat? Also, if anyone will be in or around any of these places when I’m nearby, let me know; it would be great to see some friendly faces.

From: Yoel Roth <yoel .roth@wadh.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: Hot water in D4
Date: 20 February 2010, 12.12 GMT
To: Merifield Manager <merifield .manager@wadh.ox.ac.uk>

Lindsay,

As of 11.30 or so this morning, the hot water in flat D4 is still out, despite the three e-mails I’ve sent to you this week reporting the problem. Perhaps a little more diagnostic information about the state of our boiler might be useful.

The boiler, like many ailing technological systems, occasionally ceases to serve its intended purpose: namely, making cold water hot. The resolution I’ve found, through trial and error, is to turn all the dials to their “0″ settings, and then back to their previous positions, which causes all the lights on the boiler to blink and, following a grinding noise, a quanta of hot water to be created — generally, enough for one medium-length shower or half a sinkful of dishes left behind by my careless flatmates.

(While we’re on the subject of dishes, it might be worth mentioning that the garbage disposal stopped working about two weeks ago, but no one in the flat has incorporated this reality into their kitchen procedures. Accordingly, I suspect that the disposal is now completely stuffed with coffee grounds, rice, bits of burnt egg, seeds, jam, oil, unwanted soggy vegetables, and leftovers that have become unidentifiable because of thermal inconsistencies between the front and back of the fridge that cause any food older than two days to promptly and irreversibly go bad. Just FYI.)

Anyway, this solution, which I’ve come to think of as rebooting the boiler, is hardly a solution at all. (See also: the wireless router, which has to be rebooted at least once a day, a problem I’ve been complaining about since we moved in and which has yet to be fixed. Rebooting things, it seems, is par for the course in England.) While I recognize that the boiler works, occasionally, and thus you can let fixing it slip to the bottom of your admittedly lengthy list of obligations — which include sitting in your office, not signing for packages, and never sending the maid to the building with all the Americans — any assistance you might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.

All the best,

Yoel, and the other residents of Flat D4