Living Abroad

Just finished "Four Seasons in Rome" by Anthony Doerr.  It's subtitled: On twins, insomnia and the biggest funeral in the world.  I've always romanticized living in a foreign country.  I lived in Germany while in the army but that's not my idea of romance.  Mr. Doerr's twins, insomnia and the millions of visitors for Pope John Paul ll's funeral is not a place I want to visit, either. 
After reading about living in Rome I wonder how much I would like it.  It appears to be like New York: loud, crowded and dirty.  Getting around Rome for me would be impossible.  Streets can change names as you cross them.  But then just when I was ready to chuck my passport, Mr. Doerr writes:
"In 1976, a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham in England demonstrated that randomizing letters in the middle of words had no effect on the ability of readers to understand sentences.  In tihs setncene, for emalxpe, ervey scarbelmd wrod rmenias bcilasaly leibgle."  It's called habitualization and we need it.  Imagine if we had snow only once a century.  The world would come to a standstill, literally.  But habit is dangerous, too.  The more entrenched an experience the more superficial our experience of it.  Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar.  Only then can routine experience-seeing a cloud, buying bread, even saying hello-become new all over again. 
"Geography is not something that can be ranked."  It has to be experienced and experienced as something totally new.  Not like any other place.

At the Flatiron Building Rebecca Riley's 'Randomland', a "continuously growing network of inverted worlds constructed from various forms of topographical maps, road maps and atlases."
The farmer's market:

on the street