Sightseeing
The boys were gone.
Mia and I stayed another week.
It got colder after that. Rainier. Quieter too. No more 4 voices filling that apartment. Just the 2 of us, and 2 packs of beer in the fridge I was somehow put in charge of finishing.
Every morning, same routine.
I'd wake up, sit down on that kitchen floor, pull Bucovina into my arms…
And I would write.
If I wasn't writing, I was journaling.
If I wasn't journaling, I was asleep.
And if I wasn't asleep, I was in that windowsill, looking down at the city below me.
Every grain of sand I was still finding in my ear reminded me of what had been lost. And somehow still fueled the endless wishes that the 2 of us would find our way back to each other.
That he could build me a castle after all.
But underneath that hope. Through the tears that fell on every page of that journal. Through the guitar I held instead of the boy with blue eyes. Through every song I let transform the pain instead of hide from it.
I knew.
This was never going to end with him.
It was going to end with me.
With whatever I built out of this instead of him.
Everything about him and me had been a circle. Reaching for the same person, the same maybe, over and over, never landing anywhere new.
A circle keeps you.
I'd been spinning in that circle all week, thinking that if I just repeated it enough, I’d find my way out.
Passing by the Arcul de Triumf on our final drive to the airport, and looking at it through the rain on my window, I realized that, in a way, I wasn’t wrong.
One clean, final break.
And just like that, it wasn't a circle anymore.
I had turned it into an arch.
Arches invite you through them. And on the other side, there's just… more road.
More life.
More stories.
More adventures.
This city taught me that in every stone of it.
Those songs got me into a studio in Nashville for the first time in my life. They're the reason we're building my first tour right now. And they're the reason I was able to write this itinerary at all so that you could take Romania with you too.
Not just the photos. Not just the stamp in your passport.
Take the happy hours. The cups of coffee. The saying yes. The version of you who got up on stage, even though you were terrified.
Let it make you bigger, not smaller.
Braver, not quieter.
Even if it doesn't go the way you expected it to.
This city has been destroyed before.
Bombed in a war. Leveled by an earthquake. Gutted by a dictator. Burned again 3 days into my trip.
It never hid any of it. Just kept building. Kept adding beauty on top of the wreckage until the wreckage became part of the beauty.
Until it became…
The Paris of the East.
...
If you're not ready to leave just yet, I've left a few more spots for you.
Or follow me to Germany. Or France.
Either way, I know exactly what you should listen to on the plane :)
______
TZAYLA
~ Adventure Sound Like THIS ~
