There's no place like home, there's no place like home ...

For those dear patrons who were kind enough to swing by the Kaffeehaus and wondered where GAGA had been, in the last couple of months, well, I have been ... home. Returned. With my yet-to-be-exhausted suitcases. With my inscribed and smudged passport. I tapped my little red shoes three times, and muttered, repeatedly, "there's no place like home". I suppose I could also say, sweetly and sentimentally, that these words are true:

Another summer day

Has come and gone away

In Paris and Rome

But I wanna go home

or:

Another aeroplane

Another sunny place

I’m lucky I know

But I wanna go home

Mmmm, I’ve got to go home

Not quite. 2006 was a dream. A dream that, when I close my eyes, I can still feel the breeze blowing into my face when I sat in front of la Tour Eiffel; when I close my eyes, I re-experience the fear of being lost amongst the narrow alleys in Venice; when I close my eyes, I can breathe the air of renaissance of Florence; the taste of hot shoe-string fries with loads of mayonase in Belgium; the Charles Bridge of Prague on which anyone would turn into a poet; the mountains and lakes of Switzerland; the forever-sassy Spain and its Flamenco; The Kiss of Vienna and Mozart of Salzburg; the days in Bordeaux which we started off with homemade petit dejeuner francais and finished with their world-famous vin. And so I close my eyes again, and I see the blue-and-white tiles, some cracked, that walled the buildings of Lisbon. And what about the beautiful little Cotswold, the what-can-you-not-find-here London, the numerous remnants of hundreds-years-old castles of Ireland and their overwhelming drinking culture/problem, their friendliness, their accent, the faces of the friends who had treated me like family. When I close my eyes, I can feel your hugs again.

Reality is, I am now in a place where I can see my family everyday, where I am surrounded by old friends, where I find my childhood memories, where I feel safe. This place is called home. I am only grateful that my dream had led me to where I am now.

Europe: I trust you are going to stay well ... until we meet again.