I adore long-form media, from 1000-page books to ninety-minute podcast episodes to The Brutalist. With room to breathe, themes emerge at a relaxed pace without feeling didactic or moralistic. Side characters can change, contradict themselves, and grow. Every aspect of a world can be fully fleshed out.

Recently, however, I’ve been appreciating brevity. Five-minute-long sketching exercises in my drawing class push me to let go of perfectionism, while the short novels of my book club demonstrate the effectiveness of a quick punch of a story. When I write, I tend towards longer reflections, taking a small aspect of life and expanding it out to better understand this aspect, myself, and the world. The challenge of this sort of inductive reasoning is that it of course demands some conclusions, with little room for ephemeral observations without answers. 

This month, I want to create space for these transitory moments. Developing out of the curiosity and active regard that comes with travel, and assisted by my journal, sketchbook, and camera, are a few vignettes of moments and characters. Individual diners find unexpected friends across a restaurant; medieval and recent history intersect with the present in ways that are varyingly hopeful, disheartening, and funny.

*

July 26, Belgrade, Kalenić Market. Belgrade is baking under the midsummer heat, aggravated by the burden of its concrete. Every stand at the market is covered by a tarp, and combined with its narrow aisles, the market’s visitors manage to creep along hidden in the shade.

Chatting and sweating as we peruse one particular set of antiques, the elderly vendor strikes up friendly conversation with my friend and me. Yet upon learning that we are American, the floodgates of twenty-five-year old anger are opened. His anger is not directed at us, whom he has entrapped in conversation but to whom he is really quite civil, but rather at Bill Clinton and at NATO for its bombings of his city in 1999. Other buyers shuffle around us as he discusses the historical extent of the Serbian Empire and contests the Bosnian genocide. 

One mile up the road from the market, the bomb-damaged building formerly housing the Yugoslav Ministry of Defense has intentionally been left standing. The tram stops directly out front.

September 15, Assisi, Cathedral Ruffino. The streets of Assisi are cobble-stoned, winding, and steep as they navigate the hills of the town. Perhaps the town has been frozen in time just after Saint Francis’s canonization; the streets bustle with pilgrims. A wave of monastics flows out of the Cathedral Ruffino, among them one particular baseball-capped monk, striking in his modernity. He sips from his plastic reusable water bottle as his fellow monks mill around him, his pockets filled with his smartphone and a portable charger.

October 21, Napoli, Restaurant Don Vincenzo. At the relaxed restaurant just north of the historic center, locals and tourists alike gather over five euro plates of pasta. Two men are eating by themselves, but oriented so that they face each other from across their separate two-person tables. They strike up conversation in German and carry on eating and chatting from their separate tables, a five-foot gap separating them, for the next thirty minutes, adding to the multilingual buzz of the place.

November 16, Prague, Kasárna Karlín. Eleven-year-old Simon and nine-year-old Robin strike up conversation around the fire pit, first in Czech before switching to English. The light from the fire flickers over the walls of the former military barracks, which have not been used for their original purpose for decades. The two speak in key phrases: “Five minutes!” as they run away briefly to chat with their mom; “All good!” when a hot dog is successfully transferred from a skewer to a bun; “Bye-bye!” at the end of the night, waving.

A spiral staircase topped by a viewing platform looms just next to the circle of chairs, and the siblings keep turning to look at it while muttering to each other. Eventually, they brave the climb, and bring my colleague and me along for company. From the top, we look out together over a cinema screen, a sand volleyball court, a bar set up under a tent—the elements that the neighborhood has brought in to give this place a new life.

Rylan Shewmaker

Rylan Shewmaker (‘21) calls herself a geographer, though none of her degrees substantiate this. After growing up in Texas and studying in Grand Rapids, she moved to Brussels, Belgium, for her master’s degree in urban studies. She still lives in Brussels and works for a housing non-profit. She enjoys audiobooks, bike commuting, sunny days, and learning new things.