Wide Eyes, Wider World

Sing-a-long

2012-02-13T10:07:00.008-04:00

The Lemon Society is one of my favorite nightlife spots in Palencia (see its listing my "things to do in Palencia when you're (not) dead" entry). The inexplicably English-named watering hole, with its colored lights, sleek bar, and menu scrawled in crayon on the wall, is funky enough to appeal to me but trendy enough to attract a crowd of late-20s-to-late-30s Palentinos on almost any night of the week. It is a lovely size for cozy conversation; I enjoy its reasonably-priced local wine selection, served in oversized glasses; and (perhaps most importantly) it is one of the foremost venues for live music in the city.

At least once a week, The Lemon Society plays host to one of the many small-time rock, pop, folk, or blues bands currently touring around Castilla y Leon. I've seen classic-rock tinged duos, punk-pop outfits, and even once a Louisiana-style-blues band imported from Tennessee. Often these bands are only stopping in a few places in Castilla y Leon-- Burgos, Salamanca, Leon, or Valladolid (all much bigger cities), and Palencia. I'm convinced that the Lemon Society has something to do with that, and I'm grateful.

This past weekend's concert lived up to my Lemon Society standards. The artist was the lead-singer of a much-loved pop-rock band from the 80s and 90s called The Lemons (strange name coincidence.) Everything seemed to be well-balanced that night: I went to the show with a group of friends, a mix of Spaniards and foreigners (which I find is often hard to maintain in a ceaselessly foreign environment where spending time with other visitors can be almost too easy.) On other nights the bar had been suffocatingly full, but tonight the crowd level was perfect--large enough to transmit excitement and energy but still with room to breathe. The green and purple lights threw shadows on excited faces as we waited for the show to begin.

It was during that waiting period that I noticed that the atmosphere in the bar differed from what I'd experienced at other shows I'd seen there. Unlike me, it didn't feel like these were people who had just popped in to see who might be performing tonight. They were there with purpose, with expectation. When, a few minutes later, the singer appeared and began to work his way through a lush acoustic guitar-and-harmonica set, they all seemed to stand up a little straighter. And then something happened that I'd certainly not encountered before: as he reached the chorus of his first song, I heard voices joining in all over the bar. Quiet voices and rough voices, from the perfectly-coiffed fashionistas to the boisterous drunk in flannel at the front. I'm always a fan of a sing-a-long, so I closed my eyes and let the sound wash over me.

The set continued: a quiet ballad segued into something more fast-paced and rollicking, and the crowd went along for the ride, clapping and swaying. The energy in the room was palpable. Looking around, it seemed like an awful lot of people were smiling. I couldn't figure it out-- how did everyone in this bar know the lyrics to all these songs? I finished my wine and leaned over to teach one of my Spanish friends the word "sing-a-long." In return, she offered something of an explanation. These songs, she said, were beloved covers from the 1980s.

"In the 80s, after Franco, pop was one of the first arts to recover. Everyone was crazy for music in those days. Those songs brought people together. A lot of people still remember the words." She smiled. I noticed she was tapping her toes to the beat.

The concert was winding down, and I had an early train to catch the next morning. But for a few moments more I sat bathing in the sound of voices raised in unison, now seeing the proceedings from a new perspective. People here are loathe to discuss that part of their history, but (or perhaps thus) I am often surprised by how the specter of Franco still lurks. He's still here, in more than just bad memories-- he's present in the way people think of themselves, their religion and their country; in the absence of nationalistic fervor or even flags (an attitude which for me is reminiscent of Japan) -- and even in something as small as a singalong in a crowded bar.

More thoughts on this to come, I expect.

Dia de la Matanza--Preview

2012-02-07T19:33:00.005-04:00

Last Thursday was a magical day for me-- a double holiday in Palencia, the Dia de la Matanza (Day of the Sacrifice) and Dia de la Virgin de la Calle (Day of the Virgin of the Street.) The former is an elaborate feast of all kinds of pork products (in past years they killed the pigs right there in Plaza Mayor, while this year the dead specimens were merely displayed.) The latter is a festival celebrating the patron saint of the city, complete with processions through the old town, Castellano costume, and traditional dancing by tiny adorable children (as well as much more adept older adults.)

Overly romantic as it may be, when I stopped to think about what life could be like in Spain last year, this is one of the ideals I imagined: an untouristed town celebrating local festivals, eating traditional food, wearing beautiful clothes-- and myself, camera in hand, happy to see familiar landmarks decorated with time-honored ceremony. And so as I made my way through the crowded cathedral, amidst an eerie susurrus of the Lord's prayer on 300 pairs of lips; and as the dancing girls at the head of the procession stopped to twirl and click their castanets to welcome the Saint back to its home in the church on Calle Cestilla-- I admit to getting misty-eyed. I was here. I saw this. I made it.

¿No estás aburrida? (part 3)

2012-01-22T13:08:00.000-04:00

In the beginning of this series (before the new year), I wrote about the differences I've found between what I called "nomadic" travel (in which one moves around without putting down roots) and the type of travel where one makes a new life in a foreign place. Specifically, I wrote first about the difference between the ecstatic highs of nomadic travel versus the slow-burn warmth of finding the small things one loves about a foreign place day-to-day. Later, I wrote about battling my fear of boredom as I've settled into Palencia. I didn't think the two were particularly related at the time, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that they are connected in some important way.

Nomadic travel is by definition without routine or everyday responsibilities. One is subject to an entirely new set of stresses, of course, but there are no meetings to go to, electric bills to pay, or trash bags to take out. One need never do the same thing two days in a row, and every week brings a new barrage of challenges-- a new metro system, language, currency, or set of customs to adapt to. To a certain kind of traveler (namely, me), adapting successfully and rising to those challenges affords a unique and intense satisfaction, a kind of happiness rarely encountered, and so my year of nomadic travel was perhaps the ideal adventure. Never have I felt so fully or consistently challenged. It was occasionally overwhelming, scary, and lonely, but it was always filled with thrilling newness-- whether I was at a Hindu wedding, sitting in on a Viet luck ceremony, dancing at a Turkish coming of age ritual, or singing Tibetan drinking songs.

Making a new life in a foreign country in many ways presents an opposite experience. Yes, there are many exhilarating new things--neighborhoods to explore, bars to sample, people to meet, customs to learn-- but after the first weeks they arrive within the framework of a routine. Except in the most metaphorical sense, a Spanish life is not the same as a Spanish trip, and there are bills to pay, dentist appointments to keep, dishes to wash, and classes to teach--whether one feels like it this morning or not. Making a new life requires developing a cycle of tasks that repeat--get up, make coffee, go to work, meet friends at that one bar, grocery shop at that one store-- in a way that tasks do not repeat when one is participating in nomadic travel. And I am starting to think that it is from that repetition that the boredom I so fear develops. Somewhere along the line, a life of cyclical routine loses its charm at the price of looming monotony.

Except, here's the thing: when I first started thinking about moving to Spain to teach, it was exactly that cycle, that familiarity, that appealed to me. I spoke (and wrote) about a desire to "get under the skin" of a place--to be a regular at a cafe, to pinpoint the best places for live music, to know where to get the best or cheapest produce, to become more than a passer-through, more than a dilettante of foreign life. Even now, writing those words, that prospect is appealing to me, and it's something I believe I'm achieving. If I weren't, how could I have made the list that preceded this entry about things to do in Palencia? How could I have found people to wave to when I pass the cafe on the corner of the Parque Salon? How would I know about the fruteria near the old gun factory, where I can buy all of my week's fresh fruits and vegetables for E15?

So, I've started thinking that maybe it's the word I fear, rather than the action of boredom--and the most powerful thing about language is its mutability: a word can always be reframed. So yes, there are mundane tasks that must be done, and they do not always seem glamorous or exotic. of them I will have to do week in, week out until I leave this place in six months. And yes, I will go to some of the same bars and restaurants many times over in my time here. But I've come to the conclusion that boredom in this sense, as repetition, is an inherent part of the kind of travel in which you make a life. It is this repetition that will help me to get "under the skin," as I've said, to try new tapas at that bar or go back to the park by the cathedral to see how it looks in winter instead of fall. That repetition means depth instead of breadth--and if depth is boredom then perhaps that boredom is something to be embraced.

It's up to me, then, to destigmatize for myself the idea of repetition. I need to work toward rethinking the concept of mundane tasks and familiar actions in an un-mundane setting as not something to run away from, but instead as marks of victory.

And we're back

2012-01-19T18:34:00.002-04:00

I offer my extended apologies to you and yours. After a lengthy time away (including a wonderful three-week holiday to England, stories of which to come), I am back in Spain and at this blog. And I am sad to report that technology is to blame for part of my absence.

During a couple of quiet, slow, lovely days holed up at my friend Gareth's house just outside Canterbury, Kent, England, I wrote a follow up to my now long-ago series on boredom and my life in Spain. I was quite happy with it, and I put the finishing touches on it in a hurry as I prepared to go out for a rollicking night of bowling and Indian food with Gareth and his family. When I returned here the next day to re-check everything for typos, I was horrified to find that my carefully-elucidated thoughts had been turned into a smattering of symbols and numbers--just another in a long line of blog entries eaten by the Internet. I am not the first, nor will I be the last to let out that special "But-where-did-it-gooooo" wail.

I admit I was a bit shell-shocked after that, and between my trauma, the whirlwind of last UK days, and the brisk business of getting established for a new term and a new year, I haven't been back. But! I shall endeavor to recreate the glory (or, well, the... something) of my poor lost entry, as well as post some lovely photos and recount anecdotes from my life and travels and the end of 2011 and beyond.

Feliz Año Nuevo!

Pardon the delay

2011-12-01T06:24:00.000-04:00

Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking. I'm afraid we're experiencing some delays due to busy travel patterns over the holidays. We've been circling for quite awhile now over Europe, with stops in northern Spain, Catalonia, and southern Germany and are waiting now to be cleared for landing, in time for Christmas Eve. We'll get you safely to the ground soon, but for now please enjoy some complementary snacks and our in-flight movie, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

We'll do our best to update you on our arrival time soon.

¿No estás aburrida? (part 2)

2011-11-21T17:53:00.005-04:00

In my last post, I wrote about my frustration with the litany of concerned friends and acquaintances constantly wondering if I don't find Palencia boring. I also ended on an uncertain note, wondering how I might fight against the tide, not of boredom but of bored people--people who have the power to convince me that life here doesn't have the potential I know it to have.

So, in response, I have concocted a list of Things to Do In Palencia:

1) Eat tapas at Ribera 13, which everyone agrees has the best tapas
2) Eat tapas at El Trompicon, which as far as I can tell is the closest Palencia has to a dive bar. It is famous for its filthy floor and cheap prices.
3) Have dinner at El Chaval de Lorenzo, the restaurant where I made friends with all the staff and where a constant stream of old men and women play dominos and cards
4) Eat dinner on Plaza Mayor (at the restaurant whose name escapes me) where drinks, bread, an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert are 11 euros
5) Have coffee at the lovely cafe on Calle Mayor
6) Have drinks at La Oficina, one of the city's oldest bars
7) See a movie at one of the three movie theaters
8) See a concert at Teatro Ortega
9) See a play at Teatro Principal
10) Watch live jazz at La Oficina or Ponte Vecchio
11) See a band at the Lemon Society
12) Go to a wine tasting at the Lemon Society
13) Try good-quality ham at the butcher near Plaza Espana
14) See a show at La Puerta Verde
15) See stand up comedy on Avenida Casido de Alisal
16) Go to the Sunday flea market
17) Go to the Mercado de Abastos for fresh produce
18) Walk along the river
19) Sit in the Parque de Dos Rios and read the newspaper
20) Sit in the Parque Salon and people watch
21) Walk along Calle Mayor, window shopping and people watching
22) Climb up the Cristo
23) Go out dancing in a salsa club
24) Party in "la zona," a cluster of bars and clubs in the city center
25) Take a day trip to Valladolid, Burgos, vineyards along the Rio Duero, the ruins of the Roman Villa near Saldana, or the walled city of Avila
26) Hike in the hills by the city
27) See one of the art exhibits in the churches
28) Have a drink by the cathedral and watch the storks come home to roost
29) Go to mass in the cathedral
30) Eat lechazo (a special Castilla y Leon lamb dish) at any one of the city's nice restaurants
31) Bike around the city using one of the municipal rented bikes
32) Go to 1 euro sandwich night at 100 Montaditos bar
33) Drink 4-euro mojitos at Casco Viejo
34) Have chocolate con churros at the chocolateria by Parque Salon
35) See a salsa, meringue, or rap group at Cafe Central
36) Go see the current exhibit at City Hall and admire the architecture
37) Take a class at Espacio Joven (youth center)
38) Ride the river boat from the north of the province down the Canal de Castilla toward the city
39) Go on a government-organized nature walk
40) ... to be continued

(Next time: those promised thoughts on expathood and the role of boredom in travel and everyday life)

¿No estás aburrida? (part 1)

2011-11-13T09:15:00.012-04:00

This question, which translates to "Aren't you bored?", has been sort of the bane of my existence the past six weeks. Or really, longer than that. Ever since I received the news that I would be teaching in Palencia, I've had people (mostly Spaniards) putting on their pitying faces and consoling hats and going to town.

"Oh, it's very pretty," they almost invariably say. "I've never been there. But it's really small. There's not much to see." They don't always say the "A" (or in English "B") word, but they don't have to. It's implied. Here, "small" means "unimportant" and "unimportant" means "empty of interest."
... Okay, to be fair perhaps it's not quite so stark and extreme as all that. But for a lot of Spaniards it seems there's two types of places: big cities, and everything else. And I think you can guess which type is worth your attention.

As I've struggled to make a new life here, I've been dogged by an anxiety that is difficult to place. Even once I found an apartment, moved in, and started work, I felt niggled by something I couldn't name-- until, after a few weeks, I started to discover the city and realized it was boredom I feared. All I saw in terms of socializing and food were a scattering of typical Spanish bars throughout the city. They were atmospheric bars, yes, that showed bullfights, served tapas and local wine, were full of old men playing dominoes. But as someone who possesses a more-than-generous helping of the so-called novelty-seeking gene, that didn't seem like enough to keep me engaged for a year. Yes, enjoying those bars for the first few months would be lovely. But what about after that? What if everyone was right? What if I was going to miserable here, and this was the proof?

I started an almost desperate search to prove them wrong. I examined every passing poster and flyer for events happening in Palencia. Surprisingly, I found a fair amount--plays and concerts at the city's two theaters, a festival of local gastronomy, a nature walk led by the Spanish equivalent of the Parks department. I went to some of those events, with mixed results. A concert by a touring Cuban group, decked out in three-piece suits and bowler hats, was fantastic; a benefit for the local food pantry featuring what can only be described as two land-locked cruiseship singers, not so much. But I was heartened even by the presence of cultural events, of possibilities, of choice. I started to realize that for me, choice on how to spend my time is really important. I didn't like the idea of being boxed into one particular activity for all of my Spanish weekends.

The next weekend, I found out that a small bar by the manicured park that cuts the city in half hosts live rock music every weekend. After that came an "alternative" pub with salsa and rap acts; a karaoke/bowling joint with comedy acts on Tuesdays; and a restaurant famous for its filthy floors and tasty, cheap food. And I felt something change--my search for interesting Palencia adventures was no less thorough, but its mood had altered. I found that as long as I knew that there were fun things out there for me to discover, I enjoyed the act of discovering them. Prior to moving to Spain, I had written to a friend that I was looking forward to "getting under the skin" of a city--that had been a big part of whatt I've referred to here as my "stale" expat dream. Well, this was what "getting under the skin" felt like... and I was enjoying it.

I paced myself, trying out a new bar or exploring at a new street, signing up for a dance class, or going to a new concert, once or twice every week. I was (and am) aware that Palencia, while rich with interesting options, is not by any means an infinite city, but I liked mixing newness with the start to a routine, a list of fun places I could frequent if I liked. Sometimes I traveled around the province, or even farther afield (posts about my trips to Madrid and to Galicia, a province in the northwest, are coming). And I didn't feel bored. At least not yet.

Honestly, that's been the worst part of it. The initial fear has mostly been dispelled, but the endless discussion of the "b" word with Spaniards (most often Palentinos themselves!) has not ceased. I'm sure this city is not a cornucopia of fascination for people who've lived here their entire lives, but I haven't--so for me it's an honor and a pleasure to learn about everyday Spanish life and make one of my own here.

My big realization has been that I fear the conversation more than the reality-- so I admit that "Aren't you bored?" and its other question compatriots still niggle. We start down that road, and I feel myself beginning to wonder and to worry. I wring my hands, imagining myself here in the gray doldrums of February, feeling trapped and miserable. Honestly, these days, I find myself thinking that if people would stop asking me if I'm bored, or if the city is too small, or if I have things to do; if they would just stop talking about how [fill in other city, Barcelona/Burgos/Madrid/Valladolid/Salamanca] would make a much better and more pleasant place to live... I could probably live here more or less happily.

Of course, the question after that is: if the conversations and commentary won't stop, how can I fight them? Steady, persistent rhetoric can be as potent a weapon as water torture. Are my weapons of choice-- determination, curiosity, humor, a sense of adventure--powerful enough to hold back the advancing tides of discontent?

(Next in this series: Some thoughts on the relationship between boredom, travel, and expathood.)

The trilingual's dilemma

2011-11-07T17:21:00.011-04:00

Learning a new language is a unique thrill. For me there's nothing quite like putting together a chaotic bundle of new sounds, ambiguous rules, and a generous helping of guesswork in order to connect to a new set of potentially millions of people on a level you never could have before. Anthropological conventional wisdom holds that you cannot learn a language without learning a culture as well, and I tend to agree. So I find a deep satisfaction in the process, something special and different and incredibly rewarding.

Learning Chinese brought me amazing places and allowed me to see and do wonderful things, and I'll always be grateful for that (for the curious, details of those adventures can be found in the initial years of this blog.) And, frankly, being a Chinese speaker has become a point of pride and identity for me. Not very many Americans speak Chinese, and I think some part of me likes that this ability shows I am willing to work hard, take my own path, and try new things. But part of coming to Spain was deciding to put Chinese on the back burner for a little bit.

I originally abandoned Spanish at age 13, jumping ship in high school for the more exotic (and verb conjugation-free) Chinese. For the next ten years, my Spanish language acquisition was pretty spotty. My knowledge of the language amounted to a bizarre mix of three years of middle school basics (Where is the library? The library is in the center of the city...), Rosetta Stone, podcasts, six weeks worth of mornings-and-nights (with creamy English-teacher-training-class centers) in Mexico, and a handful of weeks in Spain. It was only once I hit my 20s and spent the aforementioned time in Spanish-speaking countries that I realized I was ready to face the grammar challenges my 13-year-old self so loathed.

When I started meeting with a language partner in Boston prior to my departure for Spain, I was painfully aware of my inability to, say, speak in the past tense or express in any way my opinions on a topic. I also suffered from frequent code-switches (when the brain reaches for a word in one language and comes back with it in another)-- often I wanted to speak Spanish and found Chinese on my lips instead. It was incredibly frustrating, but with some practice I got to a place where I could access the two brain folders marked "foreign language" separately. I wrote about the beginnings of my trilingualism in this blog during my stay in Mexico, and I came to Spain feeling optimistic.

It took me a few weeks to banish errant Chinese from my brain, but after a month of immersion here in Palencia I felt I had succeeded. Around that time I started my Spanish classes at the Escuela de Idiomas (90 euros for an entire year's worth of courses, 2 or 3 times a week! Gotta love socialized education.) Although part of me balked at being put in the "Basico 2" level, in the end it was the right choice. Yes, I could express myself at a more intermediate level, but there were a huge number of grammatical holes in my language base that no amount of podcasts, Spanish soap operas, or Colombian pop songs could have ever filled.

Instead, with the help of my classes, I started to feel more solid in my linguistic footing. I could finally confidently speak in past tense, I was able to express myself generally in social situations, and I could go to bank and the grocery store, could generally Get Things Done. But the proverbial sword is double edged, of course. I wrote here in my last entry about visiting Valladolid, but there's one part that I left out:

During our program's orientation in Madrid, I met the only Chinese language assistant in Castilla y Leon. Her English name is Lydia, and I was very excited to introduce myself and get her contact information. Lydia and I met for lunch during my visit to Valladolid... and try as I might, I could not get my Chinese to come out and play. It was the opposite feeling of my time in Boston, as I struggled to express myself and failed. My sentences were a garbled mix of Chinese and Spanish, and there were points when I literally had no idea which language I was speaking and only recognized I had sprinkled random Spanish adjectives into a sentence after the fact. It was like I had lost control of my language center altogether. I felt bad for Lydia, who was confused and trying to help, but I felt even worse for myself. I couldn't remember a time when I wasn't proud of my six years of Chinese and when being a Chinese speaker wasn't part of who I was. It was horrifying to think I had lost so much hard work in less than a month.

Luckily, since that lunch I've gained a little bit of optimism. A few weeks afterward, I spent an hour trying to help my Spanish teacher communicate with a brand new arrival from Zhejiang. It was the closest to an aneurysm I hope I will ever experience, switching back and forth between Spanish and Chinese-- at some points I could barely find words in English. But in the course of my efforts I discovered that switching between Spanish and English, then English and Chinese, made it a lot easier. Something about the relationship between my two foreign tongues was causing dissonance. But I have found that cutting out that dynamic (or doing something to ease the transition, like practicing writing or listening to Chinese language music) seems to help some of what I've lost come back to me. And that, in turn, helps me feel all that work, and that linguistic and cultural world in general, is not lost to me.

Life in Palencia is still chaotic, but as things settle down I have big plans, and one of them is to spend more time nursing my Chinese back to health (along with pitching to English-language magazines in Madrid, joining a gym, going to the market more often, and on and on...). Chinese is not totally absent from everyday Spanish life, after all: there is an entire genre of stores (the kind that sell cheap electronics and everyday necessities) that are referred to as "Chinos" after the most common ethnic identity of their owners.

I could speak with the owners of these stores, practice with Lydia, and devote myself to trilingualism, yes. But I have to remember as well that things may never be the same as they were when I was writing my thesis in Yunnan, or even when I was just using the language to keep in touch with my friends and write articles for an immigrant newspaper in Boston. In gaining this gift of direct linguistic access to the world of Garcia Marquez, bullfights, tapas, tango, and Neruda, I have to lose something, too. But wasn't that always the way it was going to be, leaving Boston for something new?

A tasting of home in Valladolid

2011-11-03T11:54:00.004-03:00

Spaniards love their holidays-- it seems that almost every day is a Saint's Day (or recently, All Saints Day.) Perhaps the only thing they love more, besides ham, is Columbus, who is something of a national hero. There are streets named after him in most cities, statues in town squares, museums, and even a national holiday. It takes place around the same time as the American Columbus Day, and to celebrate I decided to go check out Valladolid, the medium-sized (population 350,000) city to the southwest of Palencia. Valladolid also happens to be the place where Columbus lived his last years, and where he died, so it made the visit's timing especially apropos.

It's not a city with a good reputation: the people are said to be cold and closed, and someone once told me it was the "ugliest city in Spain." But at the same time, people say the same about Bostonians--who I adore--and about Parisians--who I had no problems with in the course of an eight-day visit. And no one could call Allston, my beloved former Bostonian neighborhood, anything but homely. So, I approached with both trepidation and skepticism, and after several months of hanging out virtually in the couchsurfing group there, watching a close-knit and welcoming community getting together for dinner or to go camping, I felt encouraged to meet them and their city.

In Valladolid, I stayed with Carlos, an enthusiastic host and beer connoisseur/collector with a very impressive collection from all over the world. The first day we walked all around the city, which I found to be quite lovely, although scrappy and unsightly on the edges (but no more than any other Spanish cities I've seen). It has a stunning main plaza, a pretty zone in the center full of old architecture, a university feel (it houses one of Spain's oldest universities), and a lovely big park full of (strangely enough) peacocks. The second day I stayed with Elizabeth, a fellow teacher in the Language Assistant program, and she showed me around further, leading me on a stroll through the city's shady riverside walk, its "beach" (of sorts), and a few old neighborhoods.

Valladolid Plaza Mayor, the model for the Plaza Mayor in Madrid

Twilight in the park by the river

I spent the first evening acquainting myself with the Valladolid couchsurfing crew, who were just as warm and friendly as I expected. We had a small party at Carlos' house, a beer tasting, sampling beers from Carlos' collection (Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, USA, etc). The tasting was fun and low key, and we spent several hours chatting and sipping.

I was impressed with the way my Spanish held up over the course of the evening. But I've also found that after a certain period, it's like a thick plate of glass goes up between me and whoever I'm talking with. I can see the other person speaking on the other side, but it's all hitting the glass and sliding off, and I can only look at him or her with blinking incomprehension and give that universal "I can't understand you but I am trying to pretend I can" smile.

Nevertheless, it was a very pleasant time. I met a lot of kind, interesting people; they asked me about American politics and culture, we talked about couchsurfing, they made sushi and ordered pizza. Along with the beer, I felt like I was tasting a bit of What Could Be. Uprooting your life is hard in any circumstances and is perhaps hardest in a new country with a new culture and language. I had been feeling lonely and frustrated with the pace of my friendship development. (It's one thing to understand that building relationships takes time, and it's another thing entirely to live it.) But this was one night to have a built-in group of friends, ready-made and waiting. It was heartening, and I took that strength home with me to Palencia to keep on with the work of life-making.

But when they finished their party at 2:30 AM and got ready to go out into the city, I couldn't say yes. Spaniards have amazing party endurance, the kind that an American girl has to train for the way she would a marathon, little by little. They got home at 7:30 in the morning; I slept soundly.

Carlos' collection, including beer from the Congo and a Pilsner from 1960 Czechoslovakia

Valladolid Plaza Mayor by night
(More thoughts on life-building, language frustrations, and a return to Valladolid for a ballet-flamenco performance of 'Carmen' coming soon....)

January Thaw

2011-10-25T12:58:00.008-03:00

I’m no drug user, but it’s hard for me to believe that I could ever find a substance that would give me the kind of high-- sharp, bright bolts of happiness, upwellings of utter contentment, excitement, fascination--that travel has given me. Everything is so colorful, intense, exciting, different, and it leads to moments of uttery joy. I’m thinking about how I felt watching the sun set on the top of the hill next to my guesthouse on Naxos in Greece. Singing drinking songs with Tibetan migrants. Playing with the kids at the Turkish circumcision ceremony. Climbing up to the world’s farthest-east cliff at dawn in New Zealand. Dancing with Aztecs in Mexico on the equinox. I don’t think I will ever find something so soul-filling, so dazzling, so ecstatic.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember that it is this ecstasy that led me here, to Spain. I had so many wonderful experiences, met so many wonderful people in the course of my yearlong nomadic existence, but it was really difficult to always be leaving people and places I had just come to love. What it would be like, I wondered, to put down roots somewhere foreign instead of always moving onward and upward? didn’t know it, but in the first weeks of my life in Palencia, as I started answering that question, I was carrying that ecstasy with me. It was weighing me down.

Before I left Boston, at one of the many jubilant goodbye shindigs I attended, a friend pulled me aside and gave me a pair of earrings and a peptalk. “The first week is going to be wonderful, and I want you to wear these and think about how kickass you are. And the second week is going to suck. You’re going to wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into, where you’ve ended up. You’re going to want to go home. And I want you to wear these, then, too,” she told me.

I heard her, in the sense that the sound vibrations were processed in my eardrum and through my brain… but I don’t think I really heard her.

It sucked, really, at depths I hadn't anticipated. The first few moments in Palencia were of wonder, sure. I took the walk down Calle Mayor described a few entries ago, charmed by the place. It didn't take long for charm to fade into shock, frustration, fear, though. I found the hostel I’d booked for the first few nights, met up with some fellow teaching assistants, started looking for apartments. But although technically I was moving, it felt like standing still. Everything was doubly difficult: I was unable to find internet, let alone an apartment; unable to understand anything or make myself understood. I felt like I was bathing in anxiety, never able to relax or unclench my jaw. Five days in, I had the predicted melt down, wanting to run away somewhere… but to where, exactly?

I didn’t run. Instead, over the course of a week I forced myself to start to get a feel for the town. I found a café, Chaval de Lorenzo, with Wifi, where I made friendly chit-chat with the young Cuban waiter, Guillermo. The cafe staff learned to expect me in the evening for dinner or a cup of kolakao (a Spanish brand of hot cocoa), while old men around me cheered for the Valladolid futbol game or Leon bullfight. I met the teachers (almost all women) at my school’s English department, drinking espresso with them by the banks of the Carrion. I strolled along the Calle Mayor at dusk, enjoying the traditional paseo with what seemed like the whole town. I discovered the cathedral and its circling storks; I climbed the Cristo Otero, the giant Jesus statue outside town. It all sounds awfully romantic, doesn’t it?

I couldn’t understand why it didn’t feel romantic. It didn’t feel like anything. I wasn’t excited or ecstatic; I also wasn’t despondent. Instead, I was confused. I was living a dream, albeit a stale one. I was setting up a life in a new country, where every day brought me the fascinating, the picturesque, the new and different. Where were those bolts of pure happiness? I felt frustrated and numb. I woke up and felt nothing; ate, worked, spoke, slept. Nothing.

After a week, all the teaching assistants traveled to Madrid for orientation. It wasn’t a particularly happening weekend—we spent most of our time being talked at in a strangely windowless hotel. But on Saturday night I went out. I went by myself—which was difficult and is a topic for another blog post—but I was determined to see some good live music, with or without company. So I did my Internet homework and found a few bars with good reputations, then set out into the night.

The first bar was closed for renovations, and I almost gave up right there. But the second venue was not far, so I picked my way through increasingly teeming streets to a little bar pulsing with energy and drum riffs. Five euros later, I had my beer in hand and was watching a contagiously enthusiastic band throwing themselves into a strange but fantastic musical mixture of ska-punk-salsa-reggae-rock. Crammed on stage were timpanis, a full drum set, a brass section, a handful of guitarists, and a wild-haired halter-topped female singer who was doing her best Gwen Stefani impression and, quite frankly, killing it.

As one ska-tinged song was traded for another with a rocking salsa hook, the crowd responded as one, a mass of happy dancing bodies caught up in the musical chaos. They sang, they jumped, they twirled. And I felt it—that bright hot newness that transports you somewhere close to tears, that delivers a goofy grin and a heart full of helium. I stayed until the end of the show, then caught the last metro back to the hotel. I was so happy: for that night, and for the feeling that I had worried had deserted me. It felt like that flash of warmth that comes for a few days in January of a hard winter. Such a relief after the frost.

In the next weeks that happiness soured to anxiety. My life in Palencia was only becoming richer. I went to a deliciously chaotic gastronomical festival full of sausage, cheese, and wine in the town square. I started to discover interesting bars and venues for theater and music. I found an apartment with a beautiful view of the city, I met new Spaniard friends who brought me to tapas, I visited Roman ruins (details of all of this to come.) But I never found that high, and often that numbness persisted, a distant feeling: "Someone like me would really love this. Should really love this.” Instead there was just blankness, and frustration with that blankness.

Until one afternoon, I was walking to the train station when a boy from one of my classes passed me in the street. He raised his blue-casted hand and yelled “Hell-oo, Ah-lee-sa!”, then nudged the woman accompanying him--a sister, mother, babysitter?--- who twirled around to get a look at whoever her young friend was yelling English at across the road. I grinned and waved back, feeling a purring warmth spread in my chest. There’s something special about being called by your name in the street of a new place.

And as I’ve gotten settled these few weeks, I’ve continued to notice that purring. I go to a concert, discover a new restaurant, meet a new person, go for a walk in the stone streets and think, “This feels good.” Once I even thought, before I could catch myself, “I’m glad I’m living here, even if I couldn’t tell you why.”

I’m not sure if that’s the answer here: is this the feeling of a new foreign home? Does this slowest-paced version of ‘travel,’ this process of home-making, necessarily mean a pleasure that is more stable, a slow and steady warmth instead of the extremes of bright, lancing heat? There’s one part of me that still fears something is missing, that somehow something I’m doing is wrong if I don’t feel those highs from my traveling days. But in my new grocery shopping lists (on which I make sure to include Kolakao), triumphant second-language conversations, walks by the river, hours looking out train windows, savored café-con-leches—and in that purr that backs all of it like a rumbling cat orchestra-- I am starting to think that I was looking at the wrong weather report in Madrid. It wasn’t summer, no, but maybe it wasn’t a thaw between cruel winter months, either. Maybe it was spring coming.

A walk through Palencia, 2

2011-10-16T11:05:00.004-03:00

Well, it's not exactly complete (no shots of the river, nothing of my school, my apartment, the cafe where I hang out far too much, the Parque Salon...) but may I present: a brief and abridged walk through Palencia.

(Now with 100% more pictures!)

The Plaza Mayor at twilight during a rare pause in raucous games of tag

Calle Mayor, 1. A Sunday afternoon, when no one is out. Any morning or evening the street is packed with people participating in the habitual "paseo" (walking) before or after meals. Here you can also see 'La Gorda'

Calle Mayor, 2, the section near the bus station.

El Cristo Otero, one of two Jesus Christ statues completed by Victorio Macho (the other one being the famous statue over Rio de Janeiro). Supposedly the second biggest in the world after its Rio brother

The view over Palencia from the Otero (which we climbed one Sunday afternoon when everything was closed)

The famous Palencia Cathedral. Unfortunately none of the photos I took of the storks that live on the spires came out well.

A blurred but lovely shot of the Plaza around the cathedral at dusk

View of the city from my 7th floor apartment balcony

A walk through Palencia

2011-10-13T18:02:00.012-03:00

(If a picture is worth 1000 words, a regular computer must be worth at least 5.5 netbooks. I definitely use my computer much more often than my netbook. It's easier to type on, faster, and just plain prettier. Really, the only thing my trusty but slow netbook has over my beloved laptop is an SD slot. And that, dear readers, is only important when one is meaning to create a picture post. Say, in order to introduce one's blog audience to one's new home. I'm afraid it hasn't happened yet. But: what kind of writer would I be if I relied solely on pictures to give you an image of the place? Let's see what I can do to paint one first. The actual photos will come later.)

So, you're a traveler arriving to Palencia on the bus. You arrive in the station, grab your bag, and walk out into the late-September sunlight. You're on a non-descript street with a park on the other side, a dusty and much-used children's climbing structure in the center. You're not sure what direction to go and ask a couple of bored-looking teenagers, who point toward a round-about.

At the roundabout, things start to get interesting. There's a shoe store whose window is stacked with knee-high boots, a pizza place, a typical Spanish bar with metal countertop and stools. Even at this time in the afternoon, when the streets are empty, there are people there reading the 'Diario Palentino' and drinking hot, sweet espresso out of tiny cups. You walk past a shuttered bakery whose window is piled high with glossy truffles, fluffy cakes, and cookies packed with nuts and chunks of chocolate. Mental note: come visit later.

At the other end of the intersection you pass onto Calle Mayor, the nervous system of the city, a narrow stone pedestrian street that makes up most of Palencia's downtown. Beautiful old buildings in various archetectural styles and soft colors rise on both sides, most supported by columns that form a colonade for walking underneath. At first, the Calle Mayor resembles an outdoor mall--and in many ways it is. Flashy fashion boutiques crowd one after another, jockeying for space with banks and cell phone stores. But start to look carefully, and you can find almost everything you need here. A bakery, wafting the scent of new cookies into the street; Pilar's Imprenta for all your stationery needs; an electronics store; a supermarket; a coffee shop. This side of the Calle Mayor is particularly architecturally stunning. The Provincial Office is here, with a spun sugar spire; an old university facade looks like a Venetian Palace. On one side a brief passage leads to the Plaza Mayor, or town square, a small but bustling stone plaza where children play in the evenings on the statue in the center. On the other is a street that opens toward the cathedral, whose pinions are topped in those same evenings with a flock of storks and whose grandeur is surrounded by one of the town's only true plazas, filled with trees and open-air cafes.

You reach the halfway point. Calle Mayor is bisected by Calle Cestilla, a bustling automobile throughway. If you turn right here, you can find the striking coral city hall, topped by white icing flourishes. You'll find the city's theaters here, too, and the green cast iron Mercado de Abastos, filled with butchers and produce stands. But you keep going straight, and the pedestrian street continues.

A grand casino with turn-of-the-century architecture serves famously delicious meals on one side of the street, a laundromat and fabric store shore up more fashionable shops on the other. In a few moments, you can see 'La Gorda,' the smooth soapstone sculpture of a woman that marks the street's only fork. Walk to the right and you'd eventually find yourself on the banks of the Pisuerga river, with its assortment of stone and metal bridges arching over the green water, ducks swimming underneath and branches trailing in the current. But you choose to walk to the left, and the end of the Calle appears. You've reached the Parque Salon, an expanse of manicured trees and flowers that features children riding merry-go-rounds in the evening and whose benches fill with the elderly as the sun goes down.

Past the Parque, continuing north, the town changes. To the south, the city has an old, classic feel. Now, you are in modern neighborhoods, apartment buildings whose first floors are packed with bars and shops. The Plaza España welcomes you with a fountain and a scattering of cafes. Soon after you pass the boxy Escuela de Idiomas, where students of all ages study German, English, French, Italian. You see busy playgrounds set with spindly trees and clusters of churches in brick, concrete, sandstone.

Walk far enough and you will pass the rusty red brick walls of the Fabrica de Armas, a working gun factory. Keep going: now there are car dealerships, industrial warehouses, a giant mall, a hospital and famous nursing school. If you had enough time, you could walk all the way to the edge of town and into the hills--and from there you could see the whole town, the neighborhoods dissolving into the plains beyond, and a giant statue of Jesus Christ (called the Otero here), watching over everything.

El Pobre Pato

2011-10-06T17:38:00.009-03:00

Every journey to a new life is difficult, but not every one inspires you to teach your friend the American internet slang phrase “FML.”

Let’s start from the beginning:

It’s a sunny early-fall day in Berlin. I’ve spent the whole morning showering, packing, preparing for the final final legs of my trek to Palencia. A little bit later than we agreed, Toni arrives to have a quick lunch with me and accompany me to the airport. I’m jumpy and anxious about the impending flight, train/bus connection (I haven’t decided which yet), and final late-night arrival in a new and completely foreign place. I can't stomach any food right now-- I take my pizza to go.

We lug my two giant 20-kilo suitcases to the bus stop (the Iceland Express flight included two free checked bags, and I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity to get most of my stuff across the ocean in one go.) As we do, we see the bus pull away. There isn't another one for twenty minutes, and there's still a train connection to get to the airport after that. We contemplate a taxi, but Toni decrees that we can make it. I am yet more jumpy. The bus finally comes, packed with people who stare at us and our outsized luggage.

At the station, we run flat out and make the airport train with 15 seconds to spare. It is at this point that I teach Toni the phrase “FML.” Oh, Alissa-on-the-train-to-Schoenefeld. If only you knew what was coming.

We arrive at the airport and find the EasyJet counter. Okay, I think, this could work, right? There’s still 20 minutes left to check in. We’ve made it. I hand my passport to the EasyJet woman.

Except: the small print. I bought a second checked bag, yes. But I didn't realize that the airline’s policy is that all bags cannot weigh more than 20 kilos together... not 20 kilos each, separately. EasyJet Woman informs me coldly that I can check this bag if I like—it will cost E42 per kilo. I do some quick calculations and then reach for the spare E800 I always keep in my back pocket.

Just kidding! I dissolve into a puddle of tears on the floor.

Just kidding, again! But barely. Toni is far more level-headed than I am. He uses his stellar German to ask the EasyJet Bitch (I’ve switched her name in my head at this point) if there’s a post office in the nearby. Miracle of miracles, there’s a DHL desk in the same terminal just a few feet away.

After some semi-panicked shifting of things from one suitcase to another, EJB checks me in. Then Toni uses that same stellar German to get me a quote from the nice ladies at the DHL desk--- only E42 to ship to Spain. We dither for a moment: where to send it? I don’t have an address yet.

Toni, the paragon of cool and calm through all of this, is starting to get agitated. Check in time is over and they have already started boarding the plane. Panicked, we part without a goodbye. I tear my belt and shoes off, take all my electronics out of my backpack, manhandle my bags onto the conveyor belt, sweating all the while. Toni mouths my gate to me through the window.

I run—RUN—to the gate, through a duty-free mall, up and down several sets of stairs, down a long hall. At the gate, there are exactly two idle neon-vested airport security guards and exactly no passengers. I show them the half of my boarding pass that remains, the other having fled the scene sometime during the preceding chaos, and they talk briefly among themselves. Then one of them says to me, “No, not gate 50. Gate 15!”

I don’t have the energy to run back up and down the stairs, back through the duty free mall, and to the other end of the terminal. Panic is flooding white-hot through my whole body at this point, and my breath is coming fast.

I get to Gate 20 and can’t find any lower numbers. Finally, I find a tiny sign pointing around a corner. Another set of stairs; another long hallway. Then a long line in which I catch my breath. The flight is due to take off in 15 minutes. I'm lucky they haven't shut the door yet.

There are two signs above us for gates 16 and 15. Then I hear someone talking about arriving in Amsterdam. I ask my linemates; yes, this is gate 16. I run ahead to the end of the hall: it’s a dead end. I can’t help it. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I say out loud. The Amsterdam travelers gape at the crazy lady pacing back and forth at the end of the hall, clutching a black traveling bag under her jacket and trying to make it look like part of her clothing in case somebody asks why she has two carry-ons instead of one.

Finally I discover the secret: another staircase down onto the tarmac. I make a mad dash, this time basically in tears. More neon-vested airport workers greet me, comfort me. No, you didn’t miss your flight. Just get in line, miss. I breathe a sigh of relief. (Again, too early.)

I find a seat. There’s no room in the overhead compartments and I have to gatecheck my backpack and take my computer and netbook with me. I’m sitting next to a nice couple from Madrid. For the first time, I’m surrounded by Spanish—I dont’ think there’s a single German person on this flight. I close my eyes and breathe it in for a moment. This is what my new life will be like. And then:

“Sorry folks” --(why do airplane captains always call the passengers ‘folks’?)—“but I’m afraid I have some bad news.” The PA system is fuzzy, and it sounds like the captain is turned away from the microphone. I think I hear something about an earthquake and think of the tremors in Washington DC a few weeks ago. The only thing I understand is we won’t be taking off yet.

The minutes stretch by and I get more confused. I stop a passing stewardess. “Did I hear the captain say something about an earthquake?” No, she corrects me. He said ‘bird strike.’ They’ve found a duck in the engine that got sucked in during landing. They’ll need to see if there is any lasting damage before departure.

There’s no ripple of understanding on the plane following this announcement. Everyone here speaks minimal English--I think I’m the only one here who gets it. The nice Madrileno couple look at me questioningly. I clumsily translate the announcement. There’s a jolly gentleman behind me who starts making pate jokes with his two daughters. We wait.

There’s nothing for it: we have to change planes. It takes 45 minutes to clear us out of the old plane and get us into a hot, cramped waiting room. There’s another 20 minutes of chaotic waiting (I guard my electronics zealously), then pushing and squeezing onto busses which literally (and I wish I was making this up) drive in circles on the tarmac for another 15 minutes. Eventually we make it onto a new airplane, baggage and all. The situation seems still salvageable until we sit waiting for take off another 25 minutes.

In the air I’m starting to panic again. I'm not a nervous flyer, but this time I make an exception. I have nowhere to stay in Madrid, and I don’t know if I’ll make the bus to Palencia. This flight was originally scheduled to arrive at 8:05, leaving me plenty of time to catch a 9:45 bus, but after a tense couple of hours we touch down at 9:25, then taxi for 15 minutes. I grab my bag and have to make a flash decision. Should I grab a cab, make a beeline for the bus station and hope the bus left late? I have a few friends in Madrid but no contact information for them. I don’t know the phone numbers or locations of any hostels. The information desk is closed. I feel drained and jittery at the same time.

I get in a cab. He tells me it’s at least 15 minutes to the city. No way we can get the bus, he says as he gets on the highway. As the minutes tick by, I start crying again. I’m exhausted, overwhelmed, panicked. I can’t contact the girl I’m supposed to stay with in Palencia tonight. I can’t believe this day went the way it did.

The cabbie takes pity on me, calling a hostel to see if there’s room, then overcharges me by E20 before dropping me at the bus station. Points against this situation pile up: I can’t see any sign of buses to Palencia; the ticket booth is closed; I was too rushed to write down the name of the hostel and can't remember it. I wander in a haze of adrenaline for some minutes before finding a security guard who takes pity on me. His Spanish is a chaotic swirl in my brain, but I understand the first part: walk straight for 5 minutes.

Of course, 7 minutes later I’m lost, and I still can’t remember the name of the damn hostel. I ask multiple strangers but “I think there’s a hostel near here; no, I don’t remember the name that guy gave me” doesn’t help much. I know it must be around here somewhere. I remember hearing something about a Corte Ingles department store, and I’ve been around this one at least three times. I have fantasies of sleeping on the step of the store, using my damp hoodie as a facemask and my suitcase as a pillow.

I finally stumble on the hostel almost by accident, 11 hours after I left Berlin. It’s a blessed 8 euros a night. The dour man gives me sheets for my tiny, screechy-springed bunk bed. I put my things away, stumble outside to find food.

Later that night back in the hostel, I’m befriended by a lovely, exceedingly outgoing Chilean girl. I tell her my epic story in halting Spanish. When I get to the part about the duck, she bursts into uncontrollable peals of laughter. She can’t believe a flight would be disrupted because of a duck. “In my country, flights are delayed because of earthquakes or wars,” she says, then is consumed by laughter again. I can barely understand her through her giggles, but I do get one phrase, over and over again “El pobre pato!” she says. “The poor duck!”

Every other Spaniard I tell this story to says the same thing.

The next day I finally get that bus to Palencia.

Berlin and Shiva; The End and the Beginning

2011-10-01T17:34:00.011-03:00

The idea to visit Berlin and the means to make it so came separately. I loved Berlin the first time I visited in 2009; then my beloved friend, Toni, moved there for a year. I wanted very much to experience the life he had built there and to meet this newly independent, confident person who was flourishing in a foreign city, but I didn't see how it might be possible before Toni moved back to his native Barcelona. Then luck stepped in: a dirt-cheap sale to Berlin on the semi-respectable IcelandExpress just about the time I needed to be in Europe, anyway! So, a few hours after my encounter with Jose in the Reykjavik airport, I found myself in the land of currywurst, lager, and the ever-present singsong "Tchuss!" (which, if said with the proper high intonation, is a friendly way to say "see you!" in German.) It was a four-day pit stop on the way to an entirely new life. I left the United States filled with anxiety, trepidation, and grief for my old routines, friends, and habits. I wasn't ready to be finished, but even so it was time to start. I was glad that tehre was a friendly face waiting on the other side of the ocean.

I spent my days in Berlin at a small, friendly hostel in super-hip Kreuzberg, by the river-- next to but not inside Toni's apartment, because of roommate visitor restrictions. Toni works as a tour guide for tourists from Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries, leading them around museums and sites in the city and its surroundings, so one day I borrowed his pass for the amazing Egypt museum on so-called "Museum Island" in central Berlin and surreptitiously watched him lead a tour. Another day, we went with his mother (who was also visiting) to Potsdam, a small town on the outskirts of Berlin. Potsdam is famous for San Souci, a very French palace built by a very German king that famously boasted a No Girls Allowed rule.

The first night I walked out to see the sunset

Wandering in these places with a trained tour guide was ideal. I learned a huge amount about Egyptian art, even taking into account my longtime fascination with the Egyptian mummies at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. And Toni was a great guide throughout Potsdam (which, apart from the beautiful palace, is both a charming small German town and the place where the remaining powers met after WWII to discuss the fate of Germany.)

In the evenings we cooked dinner, took walks, and found various atmospheric bars to catch up in over beers. One particularly memorable evening, we went dancing at a basement gay club with 1970s commercials projected on the chipped brick walls and a fun mix of "gay classics" (Cher, Rocky Horror) and locale-appropriate dance tunes (ABBA, 99 Luftballoons) on tap. I was able, for a period, to focus on just being there, instead of thinking of what I was heading toward or what I had left behind. It was a wonderful gift that Berlin and Toni gave me-- but ideas of departure and arrival were still stewing.

Toni walks the stairs at San Souci

Hieroglyphics at the Egyptian Museum

Despite our efforts at togetherness, Toni has an unbelievably frenetic schedule, so I spent a lot of the visit on my own. I wandered the city trying to regain my traveler's balance and rediscover what it was about the place I had loved so dearly when I came the first time. And I found it, at least in part. The city is blanketed by a gritty but creative un-"dressed up" atmosphere, which permeates everything. Many neighborhoods are still emerging from the dark ages of Communist rule, and the leftover blocky architecture and general used-to-be-decrepit feel speaks to that. But what is really magical about Berlin is what's done with that grittiness. A lesser city would just be content to be dirty, unsafe, and uninspiring, but Berliners have made it a mecca for creativity, art, and community. There are art galleries and concerts everywhere, and that's just on the officially established side. Street art decorates many buildings, concerts spring from nowhere, sculpture sprouts from the sidewalk.

On Sunday I went with a couchsurfer to the Mauer Park fleamarket, which I so adored my first time in Berlin. The park is in a former No Man's Land from the days of the Wall ("mauer" means "wall" in German), and on Sundays it is filled with rows upon rows of homemade or used clothing, furniture, funky crafts, jewelry, and food. We spent four hours in the drizzle trying on stuffed animal hats, exclaiming over zipper earrings, and wishing for enough money or luggage space to buy everything in sight. In the end, I binged on 7 pairs of amazingly funky 3 euro earrings. I was so glad to see something I remembered so lovingly live up to my memories.

Street art in Kreuzberg

It was a relief in particular because of another Berlin institution that I had heard was in danger: Tacheles, a 19th-century shopping mall left to rot in East Berlin under Communist rule, then saved by an artist collective and turned into studios, a sculpture park, a cafe, and more. I wrote about it here in 2009--then, as well, I was incredibly struck by the way these artists had turned something so ugly into so much beauty. I even bought a ring there that I wore every day as a reminder of my traveling accomplishments and personal growth--at least, until it disappeared last year. Now, rumors were flying: I had heard that Tacheles had been reclaimed by the bank when its current owner went into bankruptcy, that the whole thing had been knocked down, that the artists had left, or that it was being turned into condos. So I went back with trepidation, especially after having such a positive experience at Mauer Park.

But I felt I had to go: I had drawn so much inspiration and strength from the memory of Tacheles in the years after my trip, and I was much in need of some of that just now. Berlin wasn't just a quick pit stop for me, psychologically. It was a buffer period between my Old Life and the Life to Come. These days were easing me in to a very big change. I was marinating in transition and still very much not ready to let go of the happinesses of 2010 and early 2011.

Luckily, I arrived at Tacheles and breathed relief. Yes, the bank (or somebody) had kicked a lot of the artists out of the building itself, dismantled the old cafe, and attempted to bar entry by building a wall on which someone had spray painted "diese mauer ist eine schande fur berlin" or "This wall is a shame for Berlin." But, I discovered something magic in the back lot behind Tacheles: the same sculpture park thrived, and an improvised cafe housed people drinking beer on packing crates. The spirit of Tacheles was alive and well.

Part of the sculpture garden

I was buying a copper ring to replace my old one from an Italian jeweler when a painter beckoned to me from the opposite corner. In the course of our conversation he described an uncertain future--rumors abound that the bank will auction off the building in the spring. The painter guided me into a small trailer filled with his work and tried to convince me to buy a piece, but I had neither the money nor the suitcase space. Full of guilt and a love of the place, I gave him a couple of Euros.

His face split into a grin. "Thank you, thank you. Every little bit helps. So, would you like to ask for something from my statue?" he said. Doubtful, I followed him outside, where he pointed at a sculpture wielding a sword and a torch--a woman, powerful and intent.

"That's Shiva," he told me. "She's the destroyer and the creator, with her sword and torch. She is the ending and the beginning at once. They're the same, you see."

Then I was glad I had given him the Euro; the next day I was on my way to Spain.

Shiva

Breaking up with Boston, or It's Not You It's Me

2011-09-27T14:27:00.006-03:00

I've decided that this move away from Boston is a bit like a tortured break up. Not the happy, fulfilled kind where both parties come away from the relationship knowing they were good for one another and ready to move on. Not even the kind where both parties end the relationship full of resentment and anger. No, it's what I suspect may be the worst kind: where both parties understand that they still love each other but that their dreams are leading them away from each other for now.

I wrote here recently about trusting in your dreams to direct you, even if those dreams have gone "stale" (as a friend of mine here put it recently). In that line, I've been imagining Boston and I as a couple of would-be doctors or lawyers who always wanted to go law school or to medical school but happened, inconveniently, to fall wildly in love. Boston and I carried briefcases around when we were 3 or tried to take our parents' temperature when we were 7. Boston spent weekends studying case law for mock trial in high school, while I took a college-level epidemiology course instead of joining swim team or the drama club.

In the days before my departure we were so in love that I was compelled to ask myself: well, wouldn't being a registered nurse or PA be just as nice? I could stay here with Boston and still work with patients. Boston could go to law school and I could join a private practice, giving flu shots and writing prescriptions... But really, if I was willing to give all that up, why couldn't Boston just go into social work while I went to medical school and achieved my dream? Boston and I had a lot of impassioned fights about this.

In the end, though, no one compromised. In a turn of events perhaps surprising to no one, Boston stayed steadfast on the east coast. It was I who got on the plane. Boston and I said our tearful goodbyes. We promised to keep in touch, but we knew things would never be the same. And I don't know if I can speak for Boston, but I for one wondered if I would ever love that way again.

In-flight Entertainment

2011-09-23T16:08:00.011-03:00

Airports in the middle of the night are strange. You stumble off this rumbling machine into a pile of glass and metal that looks an awful lot like the pile of glass and metal you left. Your mouth is dry and tastes off. You feel hazy, half in a dream, unsure of where you are. You're in a new place, but it doesn't feel like a new place. It doesn't feel like the old place either. It's an odd in-between.

It's especially strange if the airport is in Iceland at the end of the summer. It's 5:30 in the morning and bright like it's 10. You're surrounded by people whose chatter sounds like singing. Everything smells like herring. So you take your bag and wander through the halls to a bathroom, then make your way to a service desk to ask about changing from window to aisle.

A slight man with close-shaved head stands in front of you speaking with a familiar accent. He doesn't have a boarding pass and needs one to get to London for work. The clerk steps away from the desk for a moment and he asks you if you're going to London. No, you say: Berlin, then Spain.

He smiles. As his accent suggested, he is from Zaragoza. You brace for the obvious question and the pitying answer. Oh, Palencia? But why? I'm sorry. It will be interesting for you, but it's such a small city.

You are mentally putting on your "no, this year will be wonderful" armor. He asks the usual clarifying question. "Palencia! With a P? Not Valencia?"

No. Not Valencia. Except:

He breaks into a grin. His face lights up. "Now that is the real Spain! Palencia is beautiful! I mean, really. Have you ever wanted to live across from a Romanesque Cathedral? Now you can! Just make sure it's the kind that stops chiming between 12 am and 8 am... they usually do these days."

He takes a breath. "Oh, you're from Boston? I guess you're used to living near the sea. Well, this is different, but you still have the river. Very beautiful! Anyway, Zaragoza is inland, too. You'll see -- the people! They're so nice, so friendly. Maybe not as open as those in the south, but they are loyal, kind, and respectful. Good friends. My mother grew up in Soria, and I can tell you: inland people were wheat farmers for a long time. They are used to hard work, and they respect education."

The clerk returns. You listen to them discuss the boarding pass for a moment, then turn to leave. From the receding desk you hear him introduce himself.

"Good luck in Palencia! I am Jose Major Domo! E-mail me if you need anything." He gives his e-mail address.

A few minutes later, you board another plane, one step closer. A little bit less in a haze; a little bit more at ease. On the flight, the Icelandic women are wide awake, chattering, buying duty-free items, joking with the flight attendant. It's like a giant, strange party in the sky. It's like it's already mid-morning, instead of 3 am by your biological clock. It's like they don't know what you're heading toward.

Lucky/Stupid

2011-09-12T00:33:00.008-03:00

Well, hello there. Fancy meeting you here.

It's been awhile, and the time stamp on the last entry here is solid proof. I stuck in one place for quite a bit-- following my stint in Mexico I got a job at a small, cozy private ESL school and settled into an exceedingly lovely life for the next 16 months. I really hit this one out of the park, I must say: a fascinating gig as a reporter for the Chinese/English bilingual newspaper the Sampan; an incredibly fulfilling internship at NPR affiliate WBUR; a fun-filled routine packed with pub trivia, folk dancing, karaoke, and lectures; a fantastically-located apartment stocked with goofy roommates; and a group of friends who often felt more like family. It may have been "only" a few months, but I put down roots during that time. Or maybe I should say roots upon roots-- I bonded in an adult way with a city that I've known and loved (and that has known me) since childhood. I have been excited, stimulated, fulfilled, loved. Many everyday bumps (and a few not-so-everyday ones) aside, it has been one of the best periods of my life.

Which leads me to the next thought: why in the world would I leave!?

For leave I have: on Thursday, September 15 at 3:30 PM I boarded a plane that took me in a rather circuitous route to Berlin, Germany. Following a four-day layover, another plane took me to Madrid, after which a bus ferried me to Palencia (pop. 75, 000), the small Castilla y Leon city in Spain that will be home for the next 10 months.

In the run up to my departure I crammed as much wonder into my days as I could. I organized bowling trips and group dinners; took river cruises to cement the layout of my beloved city in my mind’s eye; and overloaded myself with Asian cuisine and diner fare, two varieties I did not expect to be offered regularly in my new home. And every night after tiring myself out dancing, listening to live music, or spending blissful time with friends, I would wonder to myself: what am I doing, leaving? Am I making a terrible mistake?

One thing I’ve realized as I’ve adjusted to the beginnings of adulthood is that the singular dream is a myth. Sure, some of us have one thing we wish for that hangs on tenaciously as we mature, but dreams transform as we do, molded to fit the new selves we’re growing into. I always dreamed of being a writer, but that dream has been refined and altered from author and illustrator to travel writer to journalist, and back. And in just the same way, when I returned home from my trip around the world, I had a new dream to join the old ones. I had adored my nomadic existence, but I wanted to know a foreign life from the other side. I wanted a home away, cozy bakeries that I frequented for bread, a coffee shop whose barmen knew my name, a Sunday morning market routine. The pull of understanding life so thoroughly in another place was remarkably strong.

And so I applied to the Spanish Language Assistant program, run by the Spanish Ministry of Education, which brings Canadian and American citizens to Spain to help teach English in public schools. I wrote and re-wrote an essay, put all my documents together, got a recommendation from my boss, sent everything into the embassy, and waited.

But of course part of the point here is that life doesn't stand still, and by the time I was accepted to the program in March my dreams had changed. I was deeply ensconced in my new life, busy drinking cheap beer in little bars in my neighborhood, trying new foods in the countless ethnic restaurants surrounding my apartment, writing a series of articles on Chinese life in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood, and pitching stories about Sudanese politics or dolphin communication at my radio internship. As far as I was concerned, I was living my dream. Spain seemed very far away, in all senses of the phrase.

But, I thought, what do I know about what comes next? I feared that this supremely fulfilling life might be just a brief phase, a period of pretend that would be followed by the confusion, general unsteadiness, and angst most of my friends were experiencing. And hadn’t I always wanted to learn Spanish, to live in Europe? Hadn’t my 2009 self dreamed of siestas, salsa, and sweet, hot espresso in tiny silver cups? I accepted the position, although with trepidation.

The summer wore on, bringing with it details of the year to come (and increased anxieties which may well be discussed later in this blog.) I finally found rhythm and confidence at my internship, I spent more and more time with a close-knit circle of friends, I joined a Zumba class and went dancing, I attended barbecues and went on dates. And I thought: what’s better than this? What person in his or her right mind would voluntarily give this up?

In the weeks before my departure a lot of people I love and respect took time to tell me how brave they thought I was being to leave and try all this newness. They told me that they admired me greatly; some even admitted to feeling jealous. I thanked them and felt the warmth of mutual affection spread through my chest, but some part of me was also thinking: “Am I being brave, or am I being stupid?” And also: “I don’t want to be brave. I want to stay here.”

I wish I could tell you the exact moment when I realized I was half-blind, but I think it was more of a gradual realization. Nevertheless, here it is: really, for me “lucky” and “stupid” are two sides of the same coin. I’m lucky to have enjoyed that life which, for a few short months, was so perfect for who I was and what I needed. And I’m incredibly lucky to have a chance to leave that life and try out a dream I once had, even if it’s not the dream that most recently spoke to me the strongest--many people who cherish this dream will never realize it, and it's easy to forget that. But even with those opportunities, I think perhaps you need to be stupid about risk taking and going out of your comfort zone in order to accept the lucky circumstances offered to you.

Ultimately, I don’t deny the fear that comes with “stupid”—fear that things will never be the same (they won’t); fear that I might lose people I love (I might.) But I can also see the incredible luck I have in tasting this life for a year. I can make room for both sides of the coin at once; I can stand it on its edge. With that perspective comes a new question I have to ponder: if I follow a dream that once belonged to a person that was once me, what does that mean? Should you trust your dreams to know you better than you know yourself? I am either stupid enough or lucky enough to have a chance to find out. Maybe both.

Regresando

2010-04-07T14:49:00.002-03:00

It's that time again-- I finished my six weeks in Mexico, and I'm en route back to the US. Boy do I have a lot of awesome stories to share with you guys. From the Equinoccio celebrations of Guachimontones to the Easter processions of San Miguel Allende to the creepy, fascinating mummies of Guanajuato. So stay tuned.

The Finish Line

2010-03-26T17:27:00.006-03:00

Well, it's official: I did it. As of this morning at 1 PM I have a fancy certificate to tell the world that I Am A Teacher. Of course, for me the mental change happened awhile back (see blog entry from two weeks ago), but the world tends to need a piece of paper as proof-- and now I have it.

I leave Guadalajara tomorrow morning at 9 AM, for a long-weekend jaunt to Puerto Vallarta, on the coast, where I plan on a healthy dose of sun, sea, sand, and hopefully snorkeling. On Monday evening I will take a night bus to Guanajuato, a traditional central-Mexican town and UNESCO world heritage site. In Guanajuato and its neighbor, San Miguel Allende, I am excited to explore winding cobbled streets and experience semana santa (holy week) in a state famous for its beautiful Easter ceremonies.

I'll be back to the city for a day or so before my flight home April 7, but the truth is that my real time in Guadalajara is finished. The comforting routine of walking up Calle La Noche to catch the 629 bus is finished after tomorrow morning: no more barking dogs or old women sweeping dead leaves and fallen flowers off the street. No more ducking next door for a mollete (toasted bread with frijoles and cheese) or a Coke Zero during 11 am break. No more discovering new bars on Juarez or watching the old timers dance salsa in Expiatorio Explanada or explaining grammar points to 10 bored teenagers. Guadalajara has put its claws in me without my permission. I have to imagine I'll be back.

This city has given me so much, after all. After my trip this year I was hungry to make a start in a new place and experience the opposite of the nomadic existenced I lived in 2009. Guadalajara has given me a taste of this, enough to confirm the suspicions I harbored that I could easily fall in love with everyday routines thousands of miles from home. And as I've written here before, this city has made me a teacher. The woman who writes her name in neat letters on a white board and then launches into a spiel on the present unreal will always be a part of me, wherever I go.

It's given me something else as well. Just as quickly as I Became A Teacher, I suddenly find myself a functional trilingual. Not that my Spanish is perfect, or even close to complete in any way, shape, or form. I still can't speak well in the past tense; I still only understand between 65 and 90% of what is said to me. But for the past 10 years of my life I have been someone who speaks two languages, and this week I found myself ably ordering tickets, discussing world events with my host family, and chatting with strangers a bus stops. I can't pretend to be bilingual anymore. The shift to thinking of myself as trilingual means foward growth and change, something not always easy to come by when you're an unemployed 20-something. And I have Guadalajara to thank.

...or hardly working?

2010-03-24T18:25:00.000-03:00

Who would have thought that a one-month 140-hour intensive training course would be hard? Well, me, for one, but I didn't imagine it would take up quite this much of my time. I spend from 9 until 7 at school every day and sometimes (when I have to prepare for exams or write essays) for awhile after. This week is the culmination of all that work, and that means there's a new big task due every day. And that means very little blogging time for yours truly!

In other words: check back soon, I have lots of amazing things to tell you about my Equinox celebration (which included amazing wild boar tacos and dancing with Aztecs next to ancient pyramids at sunset.) But the time for that is, alas, not yet. I have a mess of essays, applications, lesson plans, and tests to deal with.

Si, soy yo.

2010-03-16T23:35:00.003-03:00

I was running late for school when I first heard that phrase. In my regular life I often run late, anyway. But throw in the profound inconsistency of the Guadalajara bus system (only in this city you can start out 20 minutes early and STILL arrive at school 15 minutes late) and everything goes to hell.

That means that on the lucky days where taxis are available, I sometimes take one. In this case, I had given up on the 629 bus ever appearing and hopped into a cab waiting in the seething traffic that backs up to my shady street every morning. The cabbie eyed my white skin, immediately claimed that his meter was out of order, and demanded 70 pesos (about $5.50) for the ride. (Maybe I should be fairer to him: maybe he was the type to try to fleece everyone.) I may have only been living in this city for 2 weeks, but veteran of the broken transport system that I was even I knew that the cost should only be 40 pesos. I told him this; he offered 60. Forty, I said, or I'll find another cab.

Which is how I found myself standing in front a long line of honking automobiles approximately 100 meters from where I'd started. I'd just turned to walk toward the city when I heard, "Senorita!" A second cabbie was leaning out his window, a young woman in the backseat. He explained that this woman was heading somewhere close by: would I like to hop in, and he would take me wherever I'd wanted after we dropped off our primary cargo?

We wheeled through the city, dodging stop signs and weaving through stop lights, all the while keeping up a brisk patter of Mexican slang I could only vaguely understand. At one point, in the midst of all the chaos, the cabbie's cell phone rang. "Bueno!" he said, in the typical Jaliscan greeting. "Si, soy yo."

The phrase, which means "Yes, I am me," quickly struck my fancy. Of course, taken in the same answering-phone context, the American "This is he/she" is no less odd or nonsensical. But regardless of the usage, I liked "Si, soy yo" immediately. In Anthropology, there's much talk of language having the power to shape an individual's world view. In this particular instance, I thought, the cabbie was reconfirming, and recreating, his identity every time he answered the phone.

At the intersection of Madero and Enrique Martinez I paid my 40 pesos and hopped out, scampering into class a mere 13 minutes late. I probably wouldn't have given the whole thing much further thought, but for two reasons:

1) "Si, soy yo" is a common telephone greeting here in Guadalajara, and once I started hearing it I couldn't stop.
2) Soon after I encountered my own incidence of language/identity dynamics

I should say that I've never aspired to be a teacher. From a young age writing was everything I wanted, although once I got to college Anthropology joined my interests, jostling with my older career ambitions for space. I've always loved the English language, and all the things I can do with it, but teaching never called to me. It wasn't until I spent last year almost exclusively with people speaking English as a second, third, or fourth language-- and until much of my discussions with those people centered on the quirks and mysteries of my mother tongue-- that I thought I might enjoy making a job out of it.

I arrived in Guadalajara with writing tutor experience but nothing else. I'd never made a lesson plan. I knew nothing about learning methodology. I'd taught people things before, for sure, but had never gone beyond. I had never pictured myself in a classroom. I had never graded an exam.

Much has been said about the moment a med student becomes a doctor. Is it when he/she dons a white coat for the first time? A first patient? A first death? All I know is that on my first day in the classroom I introduced myself. In classic school style, I wrote my name on the board in clear print. "My name is Ms. Greenberg," I said. And as I said it, my decade and a half of public school education kicked in. Giving yourself a new name is a powerful thing, especially a name with such strong connotations. "My name is Ms. Greenberg" was all it took: just like that, I was a teacher.

Nothing changed, really; or rather, nothing was there that hadn't been before. In the coming hours of practice teaching I found enthusiasm and humor to temper grammar mechanics. I experienced a sweet satisfaction in seeing dawning comprehension on the faces of students who moments ago did not understand the difference between "might" and "will" or simple past and past participle tenses. I wasn't a new person, but I was something I hadn't been before. The words, the style of address so unique to schooling, were that powerful.

A few days later I was out for drinks with some classmates from my training program. Lesson planning was seeming less alien. I wasn't getting jittery before teaching so much anymore. As we toasted with Coronas, I corrected somebody's grammar, and we all laughed. "I can't help it," I said without thinking, "I'm a teacher!"

Si, soy yo...

Please state your objective

2010-03-08T21:37:00.001-04:00

Honestly, I've been trying to post this entry for almost a week now, but my schedule is just too damn frenetic. So the entry that was supposed to begin like this...

"Well, I'm here. After a canceled flight, 1.5 hours of frantic rescheduling, two super early mornings in a row, and 48 hours of lost luggage misfortune, I am here in Guadalajara"

... actually now encompasses an entire week in Mexico. A fantastic, crazy, busy, educational week that saw me doing a great deal. The first few days especially were really intense, but I'm getting into the rhythm now. We spend a lot of time in the classroom-- I've taught 4 practice classes already. Now I know how to make a lesson plan; now I understand the difference between present perfect and present perfect progressive; now I know how to correctly conjugate the verb "to drink," which always eluded me.

I live with a host family (grandfather, grandmother, parents, college-age son, and enormous rambunctious puppy named Bruno) in a peaceful neighborhood 20 minutes by bus from the center of the city. The house always smells like frijoles. My abuela cooks dinner and while we eat we often watch TV together-- last night it was the Mexican version of "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" It turns out that my Spanish is much better than I ever would have dreamed. Not amazing, of course, especially as I still lack the ability to speak in future or past tense with any regularity. But I can communicate and my vocabulary is building by the day. I'm learning to use words like "entonces" and "conmigo."

I know to get off the bus 4 blocks past the big park, then walk past the old-style cafe where gray-haired men play dominos at pretty much every hour of the day, crossing Juarez and turning right past the mollete stand to school. On Friday night I drank tequila for 4 hours with an Australian, a Canadian, and a teacher from South Carolina. On Saturday I climbed ancient Mexican pyramids and ate some of the best fajitas of my life while watching pelicans swoop over a tranquil lake. Last night I enjoyed an evening of charming old people dancing salsa in the open air. In short: I'm settling into Guadalajara.

Settling in means I have more time for thoughts, and think I have. Spending so much time lesson planning has started to affect other parts of my life as its structured format bleeds into my world view and daily actions. The question of what materials I will need for a given activity becomes considerations about packing for a day trip or even to go into the city. How many minutes this activity will take calls on my time management skills, or lack thereof. And then there is the ultimate in existential questions. What is your objective?

In the context of a lesson plan, stating the objective is practical and easy. What is the goal of this segment of the lesson, or of the lesson in general? Do I want my students to grasp the difference in conditionals between "If I pop a bike tire I will have to buy a new one" and "If I pop a bike tire I might fall off"? Am I aiming to have them master the ability to write a solid summary? It's all entirely concrete and non-threatening.

That is, until the question ricochets off the boundaries of its neat form and starts bouncing around other important concerns. What is my objective here in Mexico? To earn a certification to teach English as a second/foreign language, for sure. But what about in addition? Am I hear to make friends? Am I hear to learn what it's like to live independently in a foreign city? To experience Mexico? To improve my Spanish? The answer to these questions affects my priorities and thus the life I will be living in this city. When to stay home and get enough sleep, when to take advantage of couchsurfing parties and fun drinks with classmates? Which is better, a homestay far from the city with the opportunity to practice Spanish but little independence, or a hostel where I can feel like an adult and take advantage of the city but lack the chance for language work? For now, the homestay wins out, but conflicting motivations remain.

And of course, then there's the larger picture. The question of an objective is scary to an aimless, uncertain 20-something like myself. It encompasses every uncertainty about my life path, my goals, my plans. What is my objective and can I fulfill it? Is my objective the quintessential journalist dreams of a recent college graduate, stoked or extinguished by economic troubles? Is it the back-up ideals of a year or two in Europe teaching? Is my objective to have adventure? To find love? To establish myself in a career I enjoy? Is it just to enjoy the sublime margaritas and Sunday morning tamale breakfasts?

Of course, life isn't a lesson plan. The bell is not going to ring; no problems can be solved with corny print-outs of 90s-style clip art or a dialog about going to the library. But thinking about My Objective seems to have come with the territory of my time in Guadalajara, just as much as mariachi bands, sunny days, and cafe con leche.

Butterfly in the sky... I can fly twice as high*

2010-02-28T13:56:00.003-04:00

I am happy to report that I have successfully left for Mexico. I know that doesn't seem like an accomplishment, but it surely is. First of all, I had a towering pre-departure to-do list, but an inveterate procrastinator such as myself has no problem polishing off one of those.

No, the problem came yesterday. After an only slightly rushed arrival and check-in process, I had some time to wander around the terminal before my flight to Atlanta (with continuing service to Guadalajara) boarded. About 10 minutes before boarding time I eased my way over to the gate, only to find a giant red CANCELED sign and a mob of angry travelers trying desperately to rebook on a day following some of the worst weather of the entire winter.

Here is where I did something smart and also stupid. The line for rebooking was miles long, and a woman came on the PA to announce another place where those of us unfortunate enough to be in the back of the line could also rebook. Of course, since this was a standard airport PA system, it came out as "Those passengers waiting in the back of the line sldkfjsldkfjslkdfjowiejfwoiejflskcm might consider slkdfjslkdfjslkdfjosidjfslkdfj sguy clop."

Come to find out that she had directed the hapless hoards to a travel center down the hall (called the "something drop"). But it sounded an awful lot to me like she had said "Sky Club," which is the Delta first class lounge. Everyone else was heading in a different direction, but I accidentally-on-purpose ended up in Sky Club asking if I could be rebooked there, and they were very kind and helpful. The woman sat with me for a full 45 minutes looking for any city in the whole US through which I might be able to travel to Mexico that day. But in vain. The nationwide snowpocalypes (as the cool kids apparently call it) had snarled traffic even into a decent late winter day that would normally be free of trouble.

And so I went home, frustrated and exhausted, only to have to get up obscenely early this morning to catch a 6:50 AM flight. That I did successfully. A layover in Atlanta brought me southern-style breakfast (eggs and toast! grits!) courtesy of Delta's meal voucher ("sorry we ruined your day/all your plans!") And now as I type I am 30,000 feet over the bayous of Louisiana. I splurged on in-flight internet and am enjoying high-altitude blogging and the prospect of landing in yet another undiscovered country. I should be in Guadalajara by dinnertime (Mashallah, as the Turks say-- something like "knock on wood.")

*I am neither rich nor is this blog prestigious, but I promise some sort of prize or at least an internet hug to any reader who can tell me the source of this post's title

Vamos!

2010-02-27T10:49:00.000-04:00

I have some exciting blog-related news! I decided, as of about a week ago, to take a risk and have an adventure: I will be spending the next 6 weeks in Mexico. The first four of these weeks will be spent in Guadalajara, Mexico's second biggest city, taking a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course earning a certificate that will help me get a job teaching English worldwide. The second two weeks will be comprised of a short beach holiday in nearby Puerto Vallarta and some Mexican exploration whose destination is thus far undecided. This decision is based on the fact that TEFL courses are fabulously expensive in the States: so expensive, in fact, that for the same amount of money I would have spent on just program tuition here in Boston I will be paying my program tuition AND for four weeks of a homestay AND for my round-trip ticket. So-- why not?

That means that although there may be some last-year hijinks dotted in here and there, you can expect the next 6 weeks of WIWW to be largely focused south of the border. There will be Spanish street wandering, market exploring, and weather adoring. There will be taco eating and mariachi listening, tequila drinking and salsa dancing, Spanish learning, and a whole lotta homework. Get excited! I definitely am.

An American Jew At Large in the World, Part 2: Climbing the family tree

2010-02-26T22:01:00.006-04:00

(Part 2 out of 2, continuing a piece on my experiences exploring my Jewish heritage and identity in the Middle East and Europe)

I didn't intend to go to Antwerp at all, actually. I was in Normandy with a terrible cold considering heading south to somewhere warm, preferably where I could find the vitamin C I so desperately needed growing on a tree in citrus form. But before I could reserve my ticket, I got a surprising response to an e-mail I had sent several weeks before

I had met Matthieu and Kersan in China, several months back. They were the owners of the guesthouse I stayed in on the Tibet/Yunnan border. Matthieu was a fellow travel originally from Belgium: he had met Kersan while on a trip in Asia, and they had fallen in love. Kersan was from a little village just over the border in Tibet, but she had overcome her circumstances to study in big-city Xi'an and later . They had decided to buy a beautiful old traditional Tibetan monstrosity, restore it into a guesthouse, and turn it over to a manager before moving to Belgium. I stayed at their guesthouse for 4 nights and greatly enjoyed drinking and talking with them about their interesting lives.

When I got to Europe, I wrote to them to ask if they had completed the expected move but heard back nothing for almost a month. As I prepared for the shift to Italy, however, a message from Matthieu arrived. They had, indeed, moved back to Antwerp, to his childhood home: they had a free bedroom and Kersan wasn't working yet. Would I like to come and stay for a few days? I embraced the spontaneous opportunity and wrote back, "Absolutely!"

There are a lot of reasons to love Antwerp. It has some great museums, amazing beer, interesting architecture, and of course fabulous chocolate. But for me Antwerp had a special draw. My mother had told me the story of being contacted when she was young by an Orthodox Rabbi from Belgium named Chaim Kreiswerth who said he was a long-lost relative from the shtetls of Poland. He had come to see her multiple times in the States. My mother knew he would be an old man now, but she encouraged me to seek him out. Antwerp has one of the largest orthodox Jewish communities in all of Europe, and this man had been an important, beloved leader. Wouldn't they love to meet another member of the family? she asked. Wouldn't it be interesting to learn something about our collective history?

Given my own drive to uncover details about my family's past, I decided to take the initiative. On a Friday around noon, I walked down to Hoffy's Restaurant, arguably the best Jewish restaurant in Antwerp, located in the "Jewish quarter" directly adjacent to the diamond district. The deli was filled with Orthodox men in dark coats, with long beards, and sidecurls. Nobody looked twice at me, and I ordered a very expensive but delicious plate of traditional goodies, from kugel to latkes. I read my book and watched the men talk amongst themselves, some coming in to buy challah or other food for the sabbath celebration in a few hours. I was feeling very much "with my people," eating beloved dishes even in a far away country. The warm feeling became confidence, and I stopped the waiter and asked if anyone here knew Rabbi Kreiswirth. His face immediately creased into a smile. "I'll get the manager," he said.

My confidence increased. Mr. Hoffy himself arrived, doffing his stiff black cap. When I asked after Rabbi Kreiswirth and told him I was a distant relative, he was thrilled. "We're always glad to meet someone connected to his family. That man was a great friend and leader to all of us," he told me. He wrote a name and phone number on a slip of paper for me. "This man, H, was the Rabbi's best friend," he said, "call him and arrange to meet him." He offered me the deli's phone to use.

The old man on the phone was happy to hear from me and said he would be glad to meet. When was I available? Could I meet after Shabbat?

I hesitated. "Well, I said, I was thinking of take the train tomorrow." There was a quick silence I didn't register at the time. "That's fine," he told me, "You can come tonight before sundown. Better make it quick, it gets dark fast here in the winter." He didn't have a car and instructed me give the phone to Mr. Hoffy, who could perhaps give me a ride. There was some discussion in Dutch. Mr. Hoffy gave me back the phone, "They won't drive you over," H said. "You're leaving on Shabbat. To them, you're already finished. You're going to hell. You aren't one of them, so they won't help you." Indeed, when I hung up the phone there was no one around. Mr. Hoffy walked past and gave me a chilly glance. He did not return my smile or word of thanks. I walked out of the deli, and no one watched me go.

The transformation was so quick that it was still sinking in as I took the tram downtown to H's apartment. He greeted me at the door-- no sidecurls or dark coat, just a hint of a beard and a bright-colored tracksuit like a retiree in Boca Raton. He welcomed me into his sparse apartment and sat with me for an hour telling stories of his friend, my cousin several times removed: of the Rabbi's childhood studying Torah in rural Poland and Lithuania; of his miraculous escape during World War II when a Nazi soldier found him in hiding and told him to run while the soldier shot in the air; of a man he saved from a false charge of prostitution. He said he could remember the Rabbi mentioning that he had some "non-practicing" relatives in the United States. And he apologized for the behavior of the men in Hoffy's. "The Rabbi was my best friend and my teacher," he said. "He never cared how people observed, if they wore sidecurls or how they kept the Sabbath. He didn't judge people: he thought that was God's job. His job was to protect and to help. Since he passed, the communities here fight amongst themselves and they don't think as he did. It's as I said. They don't see you as a Jew so you aren't worth their time. I think it's a shame. I take the Rabbi's teaching. It is not ours to judge."

After my powerful experiences in Slovenia and in Prague and Terezin in the Czech Republic this was a totally unexpected development. I had felt like I was finding my spot in the enormous quilt of Jewish culture and history, with threads leading back to Europe and ahead to a life in the United states. I was glad to have those threads: they may not have represented a whole family history, but by almost literally walking in the footsteps of my ancestors I had felt more complete, connected. And yet here were these people who had welcomed me, however briefly, who were at least in some ways "my people," and they had rejected me. I was stunned, saddened, even a little angered. After a few more minutes of interesting conversation-- H challenged me to consider what I would do and where my allegiance would lie if a Holocaust situation arose in America, a situation he considered inevitable-- I bid H goodbye and thanked him, walking bewildered onto the street.

The feeling of rejection stuck with me for several days. It had really started to undermine my sense of self until I started to focus more on what H had said about Rabbi Kreiswirth. Of all of the Jews I'd met in Antwerp, it was Rabbi Kreiswirth I agreed with and respected the most, even if we'd never actually spoken. He had been a world-renowned scholar; he had brought together several feuding communities of Jews and been a beloved leader; he had championed tolerance and aid to the needy over religious dogma. And so I realized: I may not keep kosher; I may not rest on Shabbat; I may not even celebrate with a sabbath meal. But Judaism has a part in my life and myself, and the drive to do good and respect others has a part, as well. I may not be following the tradition of the Jews of Antwerp as a whole, but I am following the tradition of one in particular. And for now I am happy to be a credit to his legacy and to the family tree we share.

An American Jew at large in the world, Part 1: In Search of the Old Country

2010-02-19T22:31:00.006-04:00

I don't know much about my family history past a few generations ago. I was raised in a rather relaxed reform Jewish setting, and when I received a set of heirloom candlesticks for my Bat Mitzvah, my mother only told me they were from "the old country." The Old Country was that mythic place our family had come from in the equally ambiguous Way Back When, but no one ever specified where exactly that was. I didn't know that my family on my mother's side came from Belarus until well into college. And I always knew my father's side came from somewhere in Poland/Lithuania, but things never got particularly specific. There was a vague date-- the late 19th/early 20th century-- and some historical events that lend clues (that area of the world was not a happy place for Jews during that time, as violence swept through rural northern Europe, leaving thousands dead.) But no one had anything concrete answers for me.

As I've grown older I've become more curious about this history. When did my ancestors leave, and why? How were they able to afford the trip over? There's not much more I can know about this. There are some records but not many. Names were changed at Ellis Island, and I don't know of any resources that would help me figure out areas of origin, let alone home villages.

As I traveled this year, through the Middle East and then eastern/central Europe, I discovered that there's a certain amount that can be learned through personal experience, through learning about myself. Even if there are no faces on my ancestors, the book is never closed on personal history. Sometimes all it takes is an unexpected reaction to a new situation to understand more about your identity; sometimes just walking in the places that your ancestors walked can make you feel more connected to what can seem like a remote, distant past.

It started in Jordan and Syria. I was told, when I left for Damascus, not to tell people I was Jewish. And so I didn't, an easy lie of omission. I've never been particularly observant, although the traditions (such as learning to read the Torah) have been meaningful to me because my family and others like me have been doing the same for thousands of years. But, to my surprise, I found that when directly questioned I couldn't bring myself to lie. This didn't happen often in the three weeks I spent in the Middle East-- in Syria it was only twice. And both times the response was the same: "That's okay, we worship the same God." But I was surprised to learn this about myself, the impossibility of denying my background, even in the face of potential consequences.

Traveling through eastern and central Europe in the fall was equally educational. In Slovenia, I stayed with a lovely family who served me traditional dishes in the warm late-summer air of their backyard. As we drank wine and talked, my host mother suddenly jumped up, yelping, and ran into the kitchen. Veronika, who was about my age, leaned over to me and said slyly, "She forgot the potatoes. Again." I didn't think any more of it until 10 minutes later, when her mother returned with a steaming pot, and to my surprise I found myself looking at a dish I hadn't seen since my maternal grandmother's death 10 years ago. I had grieved for those roasted potatoes, which I associated strongly with family holiday parties and whose recipe had seemed lost after my grandmother passed. I never expected to recover them, and yet there were again, a reminder of the things I had in common with these people and this country.

A couple of weeks later I picked my way through early-morning Prague to the Alt-Neu, or Old-New, Synagogue, the oldest functional synagogue in Europe at a whopping 800 years, to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. There, an old lady next to me showed me the song book she had brought with her as a child when she was deported to a concentration camp from her native Hungary. I recited familiar prayers along with a congregation whose Rabbi was orating in a language I didn't understand. I broke bread with them in the traditional post-service snack, wandered the ancient cemetery in Prague's Jewish quarter, and thought about all the people who had done the same. For Jews growing up in the States, it's easy to feel rootless. We are new arrivals by almost all time scales (except, perhaps, the still-young USA.) But walking the streets of Prague, and, a few months later, reflecting in the mazelike recesses of the Berlin Holocaust monument, the layers of memory, power, and history were almost palpable. Running my fingers over the worn tombstones, I savored that feeling of connection to my surroundings.

That connection grew yet more powerful a few weeks later. I was couchsurfing in the charming town of Litomerice, near the German and Polish borders. I had come here for a reason: my great uncle was deported from his village in Slovakia to the Nazi concentration camp Terezin (German: Theresienstadt) during the Holocaust. He was later moved to Auschwitz, but was one of the few lucky survivors. Before his death he had asked that someone from our family return to pay tribute to the horrors he lived through. Litomerice, one of the oldest towns in all of the Czech Republic, has the dubious honor of being directly adjacent to what used to be Terezin.

It was entirely coincidental that my visit to the former camp grounds fell on the most important and solemn Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, but it certainly added to the weight of the visit. My couchsurfing host, who worked in the camp historical office as a kind of educational liaison for visiting German and Austrian schools, walked me around the village (which, disturbingly enough, was resettled by unknowing Czechs at the behest of the new government after the war, before the details of what had happened emerged) and narrated its history. As we visited the secret synagogue, the barracks, school, and other trappings of "community" that made this place perfect for pro-Nazi propaganda, he told me about the horrendous conditions that caused disease and starvation, the fear, the anger, the stench of the hungry and sick. At the cemetery I stopped and said the mourner's Kaddish (a Jewish prayer for the departed) for the buried dead and for those who were never buried, with my eyes resting on the crematorium in the middle of the field. On the one day out of all the year when one is called to reflect on one's sins and think of one's ancestors, I was glad I was there to honor those who could not honor themselves.

The cemetery, although fairly sizable, struck me as paltry and out of scale. Terezin was a major transportation hub for deported Jews, Gypsies, and Catholics in central Europe. Out of the masses who had arrived here, the vast majority died in death camps in the east or, if they were lucky, of disease and hunger in the horrific conditions hidden behind Terezin's quaint streets. I never knew my great uncle, as he died when I was still a toddler. But that day I felt I understood something essential about him, and about the nameless, faceless family in the Old Country, who, whether they fled the atrocities of the 19th century or simply suffered a difficult, hungry existence, looked to better life across the ocean. After a few minutes I left the field, but that feeling of intimacy stayed with me for many weeks. Somehow, just standing where so many had stood and suffered helped me take another step to understanding both where I came from and where I'm headed.

That may seem like a fitting end to a geographical search for identity, but it wasn't. A few months later I found myself in Antwerp, Belgium, and all of the neatly tied-up lessons I thought I had learned about my Jewish identity started to unravel.

Happy everything!

2010-02-15T23:56:00.002-04:00

Tis the season, I guess! This year, Chinese New Year, Losar (Tibetan New Year), Tet (Vietnamese New Year), and American/Hallmarkian Valentine's Day all fall together. So people the world over are watching fireworks, eating delicious things, and generally celebrating happiness, love, and in the United States' case, craven commercialism.

Happy everything, from WEWW!

Rabbit, rabbit

2010-02-01T23:39:00.005-04:00

February first. I might not be the superstitious "rabbit rabbit" type, but it does seem to me that the first of any month is the good time for new beginnings or for starting again.

I arrived back in the States a month ago today, on January 1 (talk about auspicious days for a new beginning...) I gave myself the month to adjust before returning to blogging duties. And now I have good news! Well... kind of. Due to a complicated travel-related health problem (which will merit its very own entry) I may well have lots of time to blog all about my adventures in the coming weeks and months. So don't worry, just because I'm home doesn't mean we're done here! We have lots of exciting stuff to cover. I promise.

Reflections, part 1

2009-12-28T22:05:00.001-04:00

As I start to gear up for the Trip Home, I am looking back at a year ago today to find that I was thinking ahead and my predictions were spot on.

"A lot of things in life people don't do because of the "what-ifs." You know, what if this happens, what if that happens, what if we run out of petrol? And it stops us doing things you know? And after the fact, you find that the what ifs and the might-bes are what makes it so exciting. Because every time we got in trouble and every time we broke down, we met people who helped. And it's a really optimistic view of the world that I have now, that all the people we've met all around the world have been incredibly generous, just nice people."-- Ewan MacGregor, at the end of "Long Way Around"

Amen, Mr. MacGregor. Amen.

Bon Nadal!

2009-12-24T08:31:00.002-04:00

A busy day today! We are expecting 14 people for dinner tonight, for an honest-to-goodness Catalan Christmas. Papa Noel comes at midnight, and who knows what he will bring?

Wishing you a Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, or (as we say here in Barcelona) Bon Nadal, all the way from Spain!

REWIND: India, 2--Mountains and tombs

2009-12-20T06:37:00.002-04:00

A summary of my Indian odyssey, part 2:

Manali
Exhausted from 4 days of Indian Bus Hell, I settled gratefully into Appleview Manali, a Ladakhi guesthouse recommended to me by a friend from university. The hostel was set outside the modern town, in a lovely apple orchard owned by members of outlying villagers. I slept copiously, ate delicious homemade food cooked by the married couple who owned the guesthouse, and admired the view of the Himalayan foothills from all four corners of the guesthouse´s flat-topped roof. Occasionally, I ventured into town to explore a shrine to the goddess Kali, see a street magician perform, and watch the motley throng of soldiers, monks, wandering salesman, dirty-clothed backpackers, sleek-suited businessmen, old Ladakhi women in robes, and old Tibetan women in rainbow pinafores that converges on this town, which feels drawn from some ideal Tibetan Wild West.

The view from Appleview Manali

Some things are universal-- a street magician performs in Manali

After I was suitably recovered, I did something I had thought I might never want to do again: I got back on a bus. This was no ordinary journey, however. Our van convoy left Manali at 3 AM, traveling in a pack of 4 over the second-highest road in the world, traversing the Himalayas, and arriving in Leh, the capital of the semi-autonomous Ladakh province of India 22 hours later. In the course of the trip we waited patiently as we were engulfed by herds of goats on narrow mountain roads, stopped for chai and instant noodles in yurts on windswept plains, held our breaths as blood pounded in our heads in high passes piled with snow, and broke down twice. The landscape outside my window looked more to me like the moon than anything on earth.

A sampling of the most stunning pictures from my 22 hours of my trip

This is where we broke down

Leh
*My Indian visa was set to run out much earlier than I preferred, so I only had a few days in which to pack all the beauty of Ladakh, an ancient civilization on par with Tibet (that has in fact been at war with Tibetans on and off for millenia.) I wandered the winding, beautiful streets of Leh´s old town; explored the ruined castle that lies in the dry mountains above the city; stumbled on a traditional Ladakhi archery festival.

One day I took a car trip over an enormous mountain pass to Pangong Lake, which lies 1/3 in India and 2/3 in Tibet, a stunning drop of blue in thousands of empty miles of forbidding desert and mountains. Another day I went horseback riding through the stony plains outside of town, then hiked my way through the 2 most famous Buddhist monasteries, Thiksey and Shay, which slope up mountains to amazing views at their topmost points.

In the end my time in Ladakh presented only a taste of a world I had also glimpsed in Zhongdian during my travels in China. I found this universe, culturally, geographically and politically different than any I knew, to be fascinating, much like the frustrating, amazing, gorgeous world I had also discovered further south. Some travelers I've met refer to I.N.D.I.A, as in "I'm Never Doing It Again." But I know I have only had a taste and that I want to return for a deeper experience.

The view from my guesthouse

Ladakhi archery

Downtown Leh, with the ancient palace in the background

Yours truly, on the way to Pangong Lake (the sign says "Border Roads Organization Himank Welcomes On World Third Highest Pass, Chang La)
Pangong lake, one the most beautiful places I will ever go

Monks in class at Thiksey monastery
A stunning 3-story Buddha at Thiksey. He's sitting on the floor below.
Thiksey

Agra
*Of course, no trip to India is complete without a visit to the country´s international icon (or at least, so I felt.) So during my few days back in Delhi I boarded an early morning train and visited Agra. The city was dirty, but interesting, with a fascinating market quarter. The Red Fort palace complex was beautiful, even as I melted in heat that reached 48 degrees Celsius (almost 120 F!) My experience at the Taj Mahal was frustrating-- the list of items you cannot bring in include flashlights, iPods, books that are not guidebooks, any kind of food, and I had all of these things in my bag. Once I had resolved the matter of where to keep my bag, the enclosure itself was mobbed with people (I found out later it was the run up to an important festival.) But even debilitating heat, beauracracy, and crowds couldn´t dim the beauty of this building. As I remarked to Faith, and later to other friends around the world, the capacity of the human race to find infinite ways to make architectural beauty continues to stagger me. And stagger I did, back to the train, on to Delhi, and toward the international airport, where a 5 am flight awaited to take me to a cultural universe far, far from the Himalayas. I was bound for a month in the Middle East.

48 degrees!(!!!)

REWIND: India-- Weddings and Rivers

2009-12-16T00:47:00.002-04:00

Another installment of my whirlwind rewind summaries. I spent 3 weeks in India, and the experience was intense, wonderful, exhausting, colorful, overwhelming, and a host of other motley adjectives. This one looks to be a doozy. Such a doozy, in fact, that I´m splitting it in two.

Delhi:
*I stayed for my first few days in India with an old friend from primary school, Faith, who moved to Delhi permanently after falling in love with both the country and a co-worker in the course of an NGO service placement program. We spent these days getting a feel for the city, from Old Delhi, where the city's old Muslim still shows through, to the magnificent tomb complex of emperor Hanuman.

Looking out at Delhi from the main mosque

Scenes from Old Delhi

Humayun's tomb

Dehra Dun and the wedding

*Through the miracle of couchsurfing, I was invited to a traditional North Indian wedding in Dehra Dun, a small city northeast of Delhi. The bus ride there was an adventure in itself (more on Indian busses in a moment), but the wedding itself was, of course, the highlight. It is one of my great regrets that I was not able to participate in the first day of the wedding, which included henna painting ceremonies, song, and dance. But I was still able to complete my role as part of the groom´s party. At about 8 PM we gathered at a set point and our 50+ party snaked our way through the evening Dehra Dun streets. The whole party danced boisterously to the music of a hired brass band, illuminated by slanting light from 20 electric lamps whose trailing cords were plugged into batteries carried by yet others in the retinue.

The groom's procession-- going to get the bride

When we finally reached the bride´s house, we found a feast set up, with tables scattered about the lawn. The guests ate, while the bride and groom took interminable photos with seemingly every possible combination of relatives and friends. The rest of the night was a string of rituals-- the exchanging of the dowry; the signing of the marriage contract; and, at 4 am, after many cups of chai and super-sweet coffee, the actual marriage ceremony, which involved a Hindu priest and the ritual of tying the couple together (lightly, no S & M here) and having them walk around a sacred fire.

The happy couple

Circling the fire 7 times (circa 4 AM)

Haridwar and Rishikesh

*Dehra Dun is a veritable hop (well, on Indian terms) from the twin sacred towns of Haridwar and Rishikesh, pilgramage sites along the Ganges River, so with some difficulty I boarded a bus to Haridwar. I wanted to see the Ganga Aarti ceremony, a nightly ritual where thousands gather on the banks of the river to chant together and bathe in the river. Haridwar was everything I expected a sacred town to be-- a riot of color, cows wandering the roads, orange-robed holy men camped on the sidewalks, bindied children selling flowers to float down the river.

I took a chairlift to a mountaintop shrine outside of town, but it was so mobbed that I only had time to admire the smoggy view of the river winding into the distance before I had to go back down to find a spot at the Aarti. In the press of people along the riverbank I was sure I would be pickpocketed, or at least lose my shoes (which were left in mountains outside in a designated area), but I was lucky. In fact, even when I was pulled forward by a scam artist looking to make me pay for a fake ritual I was able to use that opportunity to find a much better position from which to view the ritual, which was haunting and beautiful.

A temple in Haridwar

Washing in the Ganges

The Ganga Aarti

*My experience in Rishikesh was similar, although the few days I spent there turned out to be very frustrating and overwhelming in some ways. It was my goal to cross into Himachal Pradesh province to Manali. I had been told in Dehra Dun that I had to go to Haridwar to do this. In Haridwar I was told I had to go to Rishikesh. And then when I got there I was told I had to go back to Haridwar. Nevertheless, I was able to explore the enchanting streets and even to celebrate the river goddess Ganga´s birthday with an impromptu dip in the river, clothes and all. Hindu bathers around me nudged each other, cheering, and laughing good-naturedly. Sure, I had to wait a week to wash those clothes and wear them again, but the memory is priceless.

The streets of Rishikesh

Rishikesh-Haridwar-Shimla-Manali

*What followed was one of the worst three day stretches of my entire trip. I was trying to get to Himachal Pradesh, and I had very little success. My nerves were already stretched thin from the exhausting ordeal that is traveling in India. India is (quite literally, I think) where the busses from the rest of the world come to die, and there is nary a shock absorber, functioning vent, or unbroken window among them. I spent 3 almost uninterrupted days on these overfilled busses, gritting my teeth over the bumps, elbow to elbow with 8 other people in a seat made for 4, with the dusty 100 degree wind dehydrating me. Ten hours later, exhausted and near tears, I would get to my next destination and be told that I could not get from there to Manali, despite the information I had been given at the chaotic, overwhelming bus stand that morning. I would try desperately to find a place to stay for the night and try again the next day, when I would again be given misinformation but the single English speaker at the bus stand, only to end up in another Wrong Place that night.

By the time I ended up in Shimla, a place I had never intended to go to, I was desperate-- and then the bus was late and the hotel owner chastised me for my tardiness and told me he had given away my room. I was lucky enough to meet Bala, an Indian-born Canadian, at this point. He shared his hotel room and his dinner with me and helped me to find a bus (semi-deluxe, even) to Manali the next night. Sure, the so-called semi deluxe bus had broken windows and lacked shock absorbers just like its brethren, but I had my own seat in which to drowse, and when I arrived in Manali I was finished with long, hot, torturous bus rides in India. Train rides, well, that was another story.

Really the only good part of Shimla-- sunset over the mountains

Your European trivia for the day

2009-12-06T17:37:00.002-04:00

Food (literally) for thought:

In Holland I reached for a slice of pizza and my host (who is an American transplant) said, "Oh, we don't do that here" and pointed to the knife and fork at my side

Here in Liguria, northern Italy, I finished up lunch with my hosts and looked around for cutlery with which to eat the pie we were having for dessert. But my search was fruitless. In Liguria you eat pie with your hands!

A fractured (computer screen) fairy tale-- Normandy edition

2009-12-04T18:38:00.005-04:00

Once upon a time there was a girl who disappeared to Normandy for 10 days. She had a lovely time there, driving around the D-Day beaches; exploring some 15th century towers; sampling regional specialties like apple tart, Calvados, and tartiflette; and enjoying the slow pace of small-town life. She spent a long, fun night at a Cherbourg night club; she hosted a boisterous Thanksgiving dinner party with local couchsurfers and rotisserie chicken; she marveled at the crazy raining-9-times-a-day weather and resulting rainbows; and finally she caught a terrible cold.

So she stayed there in Normandy a few extra days, nursing her cold, drinking lots of tea with honey, and generally feeling lousy. One tragic morning, in her feverish haze, she brought a steaming cup of tea to bed, and sat down on the bed and.... on her computer. And so the story had a woeful end, with the girl's laptop out of order, a fact which will make her traveling life dramatically more difficult and severely curtail her blogging.

The moral of the story is: Please be patient in the coming weeks, as I cope with my suddenly computerless existence.

Mother Tongue

2009-11-23T11:07:00.005-04:00

I'm sitting in a small cafe/bar in a little town in Normandy, and evening is falling fast outside. The clank of the boats moored across the road at the harbor is just audible over the wind. It's been stormy all today.

I went for a walk in the gale, and when I came back I treated myself to a cafe au lait. For awhile I was the only customer, and the genial owner brought me my coffee and went back to his newspaper at the bar. The radio babbled in the background in French, and I surfed the free wifi (here's it's "wee-fee") from the cafe next door. A few customers came in, locals who knew the barman, and they chatted among themselves. Everything was entirely normal and alien, in that strange way it can only be when you're staying in a country not your own, and I was feeling a little melancholy with the weather and no one to talk to... until the opening chords of Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" came over the radio. Suddenly, everything seemed better. Maybe it was the caffeine kicking in, but just hearing that familiar song made everything brighter.

About a month ago, when I first arrived in the UK, I intended to write an entry about arriving somewhere where everyone spoke English after so long away. As I said in my last post, I spent a lot of time in England dithering about what to write about first, and so I ended up writing everything at once and posting nothing at all. Here is part of a draft I wrote up during that time:

Despite the fact that I am a writer, a reader, and a self-proclaimed English nerd, I didn't realize how much I missed being surrounded by English until I arrived in the United Kingdom a few days ago. Suddenly, a whole world of auditory delight has been reintroduced to me. I had forgotten about overheard snippets of conversation in cafes, talk radio, political TV shows, news, soap operas, road signs, town names, menus, small talk with waiters in restaurants, chit-chat in the supermarket.

I'll be in the UK for a total of 2.5 weeks, a reprieve from a milieu of foreignness that makes everything harder. I had forgotten that life could be anything except that way-- the last English speaking country I visited (besides Hong Kong and India, whose denizens speak English if necessary but not among themselves) was New Zealand.

In the weeks I spent in the UK I delighted in my linguistic surroundings. I spent time in pubs doing some harmless eavesdropping and was amused by road signs for towns with names like "Thornfalcon" and "Fivehead." I ordered food with ease, asked for directions on the street, and followed with some interest the appearance of British politician Nick Griffin on the important BBC political TV show “Question Time." Griffin, who fronts a xenophobic political party with a platform that some say is redolent of neo-Nazism, created a stir with this appearance, and I was gleefully able to watch the video with my British friends, read the newspaper stories that followed, and talk to people I met about their opinions on the subject. It was entirely refreshing. I felt that I was really participating in current events, in the vital present-day life of the country.

When, on the way from a friend's house to the train station one Sunday morning, I was treated to an episode of "The Archers," a British radio institution that has been on the air since WWII, I felt similarly. As the hedgerows, fallow fields, and orchards of Somerset flashed by, I listened to the dramas of the families this program has tracked for decades. Following the sounds of their lives, I learned the lessons tucked into the narrative, about everything from family planning to how to plant a vegetable garden, along with the rest of the British public.

Sitting in this cafe after the last chords of Wham! died away, all of this has been on my mind. I've felt especially keenly the importance of linguistic immersion during the past few weeks, which were spent in France and, briefly, Belgium. Although I speak slightly more French now than when I arrived--that is to say of the latter none at all, and the former the basics like "one coffee please" and "could I have the bill, please"-- I have missed the feeling of deep comprehension and ease that comes with knowing the language.

And while I recognize this loss, I'm not sure that one experience is somehow "less" than the other. There is nothing like sitting down in a crowded Parisian (or Norman) cafe with a glass of wine or a coffee and losing yourself in the chatter and cigarette smoke, the foot traffic passing by, or the boats clacking together in the wind. It's easier to remind yourself of the otherness of your circumstances, to feel the exotic close up around you, when you are surrounded by a language you cannot understand.

It's certainly something to consider, these factors, as small as a passing mood or the weather or as large as a linguistic barrier, that affect a traveler's experiences and perceptions of a place. Would Paris have seemed as enchanting and magical if I could have understood the man next to me complaining about his lazy wife or those dirty immigrants? Would I have felt so at ease in England if I hadn't been able to ask new acquaintances their impressions of Nick Griffin or the bartender which local Somerset cider he recommended? Probably not.

So one thing I've learned from this linguistic adventure is that you have to embrace your travel experiences as lovely and perfectly flawed in their subjectivity. Like everyone else, I am a bundle of strengths and weakness (linguistics among them), and for me England represents the familiar and comfortable, while France is more mysterious and secretive. For another traveler the opposite could easily be true. But that's part of the miracle of travel-- that and Wham! on the radio in a little bar in an unexpected place.

Deepest apologies

2009-11-20T19:23:00.002-04:00

I know it's been forever since my last entry; a complete lack of internet access in London, followed by a whirlwind through Scotland and Paris (and dithering about what to write about first!) has kept me off this blog. And now I am about to depart for a lovely vacation-from-my-vacation in Normandy, where I will sit and look out at the window at the Carentan harbor and write... but I won't be able to share it with you.

Yes, I am looking at a full week without internet, sort of a nightmare and sort of a curiosity. Hopefully I will be able to find fleeting connections to post whatever I'm writing. I have so much to say! Thoughts on exploring my Jewish identity in Europe, on the importance of language in travel, and on the "artifacts of home," from baseball to Halloween. Stay tuned!

Riddle me this

2009-10-29T10:48:00.002-03:00

From the moment I arrived here in foggy, windswept, beautiful Cornwall, I had one phrase swirling around in my head.

"As I was going to St. Ives/I met a man with seven wives..."

That's because the real St. Ives (also see: skin product) is about 15 miles from where I'm staying, in Penzance (also see: Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of"),

For the first several days I thought I was going crazy. I had no idea where I'd heard that phrase before, and I didn't know the rest of the rhyme (although I was pretty sure there was more of it.) Finally, I resorted to the internet, and because we pretty much live in a Hive Mind society these days, a simple 30 second search got me the following:

As I was going to St Ives

I met a man with seven wives

Each wife had seven sacks

Each sack had seven cats

Each cat had seven kits

Kits, cats, sacks, wives

How many were going to St Ives?

I have no idea where I would have heard this rhyme, but I can imagine it was probably a nursery rhyme I learned (the Brits here would say "learnt") some 20 years ago that was floating around waiting to be rediscovered a decade or two later. The brain's capacity for memory is occasionally astounding.

By the way, can you figure out the answer to the riddle?

REWIND: Hong Kong/ Macau

2009-10-22T09:56:00.005-03:00

One of the twists of flying on a round-the-world ticket is that you have to fly where the airlines fly, but that's not always a bad thing. In July, for example, I stopped in Jordan (and, on a whim, also Syria) because there were no direct flights between India and Greece, and I loved my time there-- but more on that later. First, though, in May, the round-the-world ticket compelled me to pause in Hong Kong for a few days on the way from Kunming, China to Delhi, India. I had a good friend, John (longtime readers of this blog will remember him from my days studying in China) teaching English there with his girlfriend, so I stopped in to recharge my batteries, hang out with them for a few days, and see some what I could of the city.

My time in Hong Kong was very laid back-- my priority was relaxing and spending time with my friends, rather than any intensive exploration. We cooked, played games, slept late, watched movies in our pajamas. It may sound odd, but for the long-term traveler, these kinds of mundane everyday activities are exotic and much sought-after. Museums, maps to foreign cities, trains, castles, markets-- these are our bread and butter. So for me it was thrilling to make popcorn and watch "The Daily Show" a few days in a row.

Of course, we did get out occasionally to do some fun things, such as visiting a great used book store, stuffing ourselves with dim sum (a must in southern China), and going to a posh wine bar for a wine tasting night. Lisa and I visited John at his school to watch him teach a lesson; another day we went out to the fantastically-named and wonderfully authentic Flying Pan diner (delicious omelets and home fries in the middle of Kowloon island, who knew?) And on my last day I took a day-trip to Macau, which is only a couple of hours by ferry from Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong skyline Walking around Kowloon island

Macau and Hong Kong have a lot in common. They were both culturally and politically leased to colonial powers for many years-- Hong Kong to the British and Macau to the Portuguese. Both were returned to China within the last couple of decades and have since undergone rapid economic and cultural transformation, but both retain an interesting mix of cultures. Macau is also becoming known as a Chinese Las Vegas, a gambling mecca of crazy proportions. I wanted to see it all for myself.

My day in Macau was interesting-- I checked out a couple of the gaudier casinos and wandered a few of the neighborhoods that have retained their Portuguese character. And I tried Macanese food, which includes a lot of Chinese characteristics (wok frying, local vegetables) but also features delicacies like dulce de leche. The anthropologist in me found the way the cultures coexist and mingle in the cuisine and on the street fascinating.

Portuguese and Chinese side by side
I didn't spend much time in the casinos, preferring to admire them from outside. I did go out of my way, however, to visit the Venetian, an over-the-top casino a fellow traveler had recommended that houses a to-scale recreation of Venice's Piazza San Marco and surrounding streets, featuring gondola rides where the gondoliers will sing to you. I was definitely impressed-- the replica even included lighting to match the time of day outside.

One of the famous Macau casinos

Inside the Venetian

I finished my day with a wander around the quaint neighborhoods of southern Macau and a stop at a family restaurant, where the Macanese family pressed extra goodies on me and I bought some dulce de leche to bring home to John and Lisa, who were waiting with pizza. The next morning, I gathered my things and ventured over to the Hong Kong airport, where my flight to India was waiting.

Macanese colonial architecture
Macau street life

One of the famous sights of Macau, an old colonial church destroyed in a fire, with only the facade left standing

Keeping pace

2009-10-18T13:33:00.005-03:00

I may be only 22, but I think I'm getting an idea of what it is to age.

A month ago I wrote here about hitting the 2/3 mark in my one-year trip. I hadn't felt burnt out then, and I don't feel it now. But I've been traveling solo in Europe for 1.5 months at this point, and I've started to notice a change in pace. I don't do as much in a day anymore; I need more moments to rest and unwind, more time to start my engines; I take more hours"off," not sightseeing or exploring, just sitting in cafes or watching TV or reading. I am still loving every day, but I'm tired. I'm getting travel-old.

At the beginning of this trip I spent a few days in each city, moving as often as I liked or could manage. A few months in I figured out, through calculation and observation, that I needed a complete day off, with no obligation to see or do anything except lie around, about every 7 to 10 days. This was sometimes difficult to do because there was always a little voice in my head jabbering about wasting valuable time in a place I might never see again.

But the longer I traveled the quieter that voice got. I still experienced an awful lot, and I realized that the necessity for downtime made me human. One day, while I sat in an anonymous room in an anonymous country surfing the net mindlessly, I realized that in some way this break was like creating a home for me to go to. Whatever strange place I found myself in, I could recreate the same setting-- a nondescript room, a comfortable bed, a long stretch of free time, a book, a computer, some junk food--that would be like a return to home base. It wasn't just dealing with exhaustion, it was a way to make a safe haven, something familiar in all the strangeness that was the same whether I was in Taiwan or Turkey.

When I got to Europe my pace changed. These past months I've spent more time in each place-- averaging about a week per city, with some shorter stints and day trips thrown in-- and done less each day. In part this was a conscious choice. I decided at the beginning of September, as I set out on my 4-month European adventure, that because I had the time to settle in and let a city get under my skin, I should take advantage of that opportunity. So I've slept in more often, seen one museum in a day instead of two, read my book in cafes and parks, and given myself permission to do less seeing and more living.

And it's lucky I did, because what started out as a lifestyle decision has become more and more of a necessity as the time ticks by. Even a traveler so in love with this lifestyle (Today I walked down the streets of Leiden in the Netherlands and thought,r "I was born for this") gets worn out. So I relax, I adjust, I rest. And then I move on.

Nothing is rotten in the state of Denmark*

2009-10-10T03:37:00.004-03:00

... unless you count me. Spoiled rotten, that is. I arrived in Copenhagen a few nights ago, where I am staying with some dear family friends who are treating me like a queen. From trips into the countryside to museums to delicious meals, I am enjoying myself greatly.

I've explored the city center, enjoying both a sunny day and a brisk "Kultur Natten," an evening when cultural landmarks from theaters to embassies to the Danish palace gave open houses. I've explore Rothskilde, where 5 Viking ships were unearthed and restored and where 1000 years worth of Danish monarchs are interred. I indulged my inner English geek at Elsinore (now spelled 'Helsingor'), where the real Hamlet (whose name was Amled) ruled, and Fredriksborg, another stunning castle filled with exquisite decor. I ate fried fish on a sunny afternoon along the colorfully painted banks of New Harbor; a few days ago I had the rare opportunity to visit the Danish Adventurers' Club, whose clubhouse is hung with Papuan shields and Tibetan headdresses and among whose members sit the likes of John Glenn. And later this week I'm planning a couple excursions across the strait Sweden.

It seems there's more to see in heaven and Copenhagen, Horatio, than is dreamt of in my philosophy...

* Apologies to Shakespeare

Ich bin ein Berliner

2009-10-05T09:41:00.003-03:00

After a false start this morning (leaving my host's apartment a bit late + awful luck with tram and metro timing = missing my train to Hamburg) I am en route to Copenhagen. To celebrate my fairly cruddy day, I invested in some super-shiny on-train wireless internet.

Yes, I left Berlin today, albeit with a heavy heart. The city is truly vibrant, with a very different feel than the other Germany cities (or other central European cities, for that matter) that I visited. The look is different, of course, since so much of the city had to be rebuilt after the various wars/conflicts that it has hosted in the past century or so. But what really attracted me was the creativity that permeated so much of what I did. Some highlights:

*Art museum hopping-- from a great little place full to the brim with Picasso and Matisse to the Hamburger Hof (a redone train station), which features amazing modern art from Warhol to Nauman and also currently boasts a very interesting exhibition from three new artists who are competing for an annual prize

* Spending Wednesday night at the Wienerei, a cozy/funky cafe which hosts a weekly "wine night." You pay 1 euro entrance and a 1 euro deposit for your glass, then feel free to drink as much wine, champagne, juice, or whatnot as you like all night. There are lots of interesting people about (if you're lucky, lots of couchsurfers, too), a tasty buffet, and at the end you pay whatever you think is a fair amount

*Exploring the Turkish quarter, Kreuzberg, sometimes known as the third Turkish city outside Istanbul and Ankara. Went with my host to the Thursday market there, and the hawkers selling produce, material, gozleme, and doner made me nostalgic for July. Then met an interesting couchsurfer (writing her thesis on crime fiction in South Africa) for some amazing and quite-close-to-authentic tasting chai at a great cafe nearby-- which made me nostalgic for June

*Visiting the Memorial to Murdered Jews of Europe, an abstract sculpture made of hundreds of rock pillars that appear to be the same height but actually descend into a disorienting, sickening, sobering forest in the middle, was very affecting. The museum underneath it, detailing real people and real families obliterated in the genocide, made me both almost cry and almost vomit, neither of which I am moved to do easily. More about this in a later entry

*Celebrating! I didn't know this beforehand, but October 3 is Reunification Day, commemorating the reunification of East and West Germany. I was around for the festivities and managed to weasel my into a festival of food, drink, and great German bands. I did miss an art installation in which a troupe of puppeteers staged a reenactment of the fall of the Berlin wall using 10-meter high puppets, unfortunately.

*Exploring the remnants of East German culture, specifically the beautifully preserved murals on what's left of the wall and a fascinating sculpture gallery/studio complex/cafe cluster made from a building that had been left to urban blight during the 90s. What was once a filthy, graffiti-riddled hulk has become a beautiful, vibrant, graffiti-rich place for alternative artists to work and show the results. I wandered the warren of small home-made galleries constructed from pieces of scrap metal, storage containers, and old fences, and felt in awe of the art that can come from chaos.

*Visiting the weekly flea market in Mauer park, which was equally uplifting. It was a great flea market, in general, with lots of interesting crafts and intriguing junk, but what really caught my breath and my eye was the grassroots karaoke session which happens there every week in a small run-down ampitheater at one side of the park. At least 200 people gathered to drink beer and watch the proceedings. There was an ad hoc soundsystem wired through a couple of bicycles and a Mac laptop, and an Irish guy was MCing as a succession of Germans, Danes, and Norwegians worked their way through the likes of Elvis' "A Little Less Conversation," Janis Joplin's "Another Little Piece of My Heart," and the one and only "Sweet Transvestite." It was entirely unironic, despite the hipster clothing in evidence, just a lot of people with a cold, windy Sunday on their hands who weren't afraid to look silly and let loose.

Art, cafes, culture, markets, karaoke. And I'm told the rent is cheap and English teaching jobs are plentiful, if competitive. Just a few reasons I'll have to come back some day.

Boston, Berlin; Tomay-to, tomah-to

2009-09-30T04:09:00.003-03:00

I arrived in Berlin late last night, and the first things I saw when I got into the train station were:

a) An advertisement for the Blue Man Group
b) A Dunkin Donuts

So I had a moment of Boston nostalgia around these two originals my hometown-- It's easy these days, since I love New England fall dearly. But... then I forged ahead into the unbelievably complicated S-Bahn-U-Bahn metro system, which puts dear old Boston to shame (there are something like 25 lines!) and remembered what city I was in, after all.

So what do you do?/Oh yeah, I wait tables, too

2009-09-24T05:54:00.006-03:00

My perfect 5 minutes from today: seeing a street musician in a cafe by the Vltava river sing "Bohemian Like You" by the Dandy Warhols. The night was unseasonably warm, the lights were coming off the river, the amazing Prague castle towered in the background-- and I giggled, because I am a huge nerd and hearing this song while actually in Bohemia was just too excellent.

REWIND: China

2009-09-21T03:47:00.001-03:00

Another unit in my "rewind" series, giving you a taste of my trips until such time as I can post more in detail (likely when I return to the states)...

Arriving in Yunnan province, China (in early April) was different than most of the other arrivals on my trip-- for me it was a real homecoming, as long-time readers of this blog know. I spent almost 6 months in Yunnan during university studying Mandarin; learning about Chinese history, religion, and economics; and doing anthropology research for my undergraduate thesis in Anthropology, which focused on the storytelling traditions of the Lisu indigenous group in northwest Yunnan. The entirety of my visit to Yunnan this time around had a nostalgic, affectionate feel, as I revisited old haunts, met old friends and, in the last section, took my parents to meet some of the people who opened their homes and lives to me during my research.

Kunming:
*I spent almost a week in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, but it wasn't a particularly eventful week. I had lunch with old teachers; saw one of my friends from the semester abroad, Mike, who was in town doing research on a Fulbright grant; spent an inordinate amount of time in my old favorite restaurants and cafes (most significantly Salvador's, the best western-style coffee shop in the city, which had been the victim of a terrorist attack since my last visit.) I stayed in Mike's apartment for the duration of my visit, but he had to go back to the US unexpectedly to look at graduate schools. It turned out to be a great set up, though, as I caught the first serious cold of my entire trip and was basically flat on my back for most of the week, sleeping and watching internet TV but not having to worry about getting anyone else sick or dealing with a hotel staff/ loud hostelmates.

On campus at Yunnan Normal University, my home for spring semester 2007
Zhongdian
Once I started feeling better, I made my way to Zhongdian (also known in Tibetan as Gyelthang), a tourist boomtown on the edge of the Tibetan world, only a short trip from the border of the TAR (Tibetan Autonomous Region). I had been for a brief trip with my classmates during the semester abroad and had been deeply affected by the atmosphere, which truly is different than anywhere else, and the mix of cultures I learned about during our stay. My entry from that time ("Kham is Calm," which can be found in the 2007 archive of this blog) marveled at the amazing serenity I felt while exploring the Songzanlin monastery outside of town. I returned to Zhongdian hoping to reclaim that feeling and delve a little bit deeper into the world whose surface I had only brushed three years ago.

*I stayed in a guesthouse belonging to a bicultural couple, Mattieu and Kersan, he from Belgium, she from a Tibetan settlement a couple of hours north toward the border, who were friendly and very interesting to talk to. The guesthouse was beautiful, and every morning their cook/helper made me a traditional Tibetan breakfast of flatbread with honey, yogurt, fruit, and (instead of butter tea) coffee. I would sit out in the brisk spring sunshine enjoying the view of the new temple and town rooftops before starting my day.

*I went to visit that new temple, which the people of Zhongdian erected after their town because something of a tourist mecca, and took a spin around the largest prayer wheel in the world. Afterward, I happened get into a long conversation with one of the monks. He asked me a lot of questions about American life and told me about what it's like to be a monk and about his home life.

The largest prayer wheel in the world Prayer flags against a backdrop of spring cherry blossoms *I went back to Songzanlin Monastery, which had changed a great deal (including the addition of a large and obtrusive tourist gate and a price hike) but was still equally affecting and beautiful inside. There I made friends with a pair of monks, one young and one old, who told me they were grandfather and grandson. They were delighted to talk to me, the younger taking my camera for a spin around the prayer hall and the older admiring my girth (the subject of much unfortunate admiration in that part of the world) and engaging me in a simple political discussion. When I told him I was American, he smiled. "Bush, Dalai Lama" he said happily, showing me two clasped hands. "England, Dalai Lama; France, Dalai Lama"-- the clasped hands again. Then his expression darkened. "China, Dalai Lama," he said, and his fist drove into his open hand.

At the monastery
Grandfather and grandson
*During my first trip to I had met several members of Khampa Caravan, a Tibetan-run tour company that ensures that the money from its tours goes straight to the Tibetan community in the area (rather than opportunistic businesspeople who have flocked to the city to take advantage of the tourist boom.) I decided I wanted to make a day trip into the countryside outside of Zhongdian, and Khampa Caravan seemed like a good place to start. I contacted the company, and in the course of deciding on a drive north toward Deqin I made friends with the Caravan with whom I was corresponding, whose name was Dolma.

One Dolma rounded up several of her Tibetan friends, and we all drank strong Tibetan wine and talked into the night as the Lhasa Cafe emptied around us. During my first trip to Zhongdian I had met a few Tibetans who I was told had been educated in India, but I never really thought about what this meant. Discussing my new friends' life histories, however, I started to understand the amazing strength Tibetan refugees in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces must have. Each of the men pictured below left his home in the Chinese countryside between age 11 and 13. He took a bus to Lhasa (3 days), then walked-- yes, walked-- over the Himalayas for 17 more, often with no food and little to drink. He then had to sneak over the border into Nepal, bus to the Indian border, and hope to claim refugee status there. If he succeeded, he could stay in India until his education was complete 5-10 years later, never seeing his family and recieving letters a few times a year if he was lucky. If he didn't (as in the case of the gentleman in the middle of this picture), he would be sent back to Lhasa, where he would have to start the 17-day walk all over again.

As the liquor flowed, we began trading songs and stories from our respective cultures. The cafe was empty by this time, and I got goose bumps as the voices of my new friends, strong with drink, soared in unfamiliar melodies punctuated by whoops and handclaps. (I will be sure to post some of these stories, and possibly a video with one song in the "real" entry on Zhongdian later this year.)

My new Tibetan friends
* My day trip up near Deqin was wonderful. The weather was gorgeous, the scenery stunning, and my guide well informed. We drove first up a major pass overlooking Napa Lake, then down to what locals call a "hot" valley, where prosperous artisan villages create amazing crafts, from cast iron pots of wooden sculpture to beautiful brasswork. The enormous traditional houses were bordered with cacti, certainly not an item I had had on my list of "things you would find in Tibet." The amazing day, which deserves its own entry, ended with a tortuous drive to an ancient monastery and a beautiful nunnery.

Napa lake in the spring
*Giving in to the impulse I would be fighting (and still am) for many months to do and see everything possible, no matter the stress, I arranged before I left Zhongdian to participate in a short (very short) "homestay experience." The program, new for its type in Zhongdian, was a form of ecotourism, connecting me with a farmer in a very small village outside town. He picked me up and drove me through countryside teeming with yaks and goats to his house, where I met his family, learned about his enormous 3-floor wooden house (which he built himself, over 2 years), and ate fried potatoes and butter tea. It was a too-brief, but despite the squeeze I had to make in order to catch my sleeper bus that night, a peek into daily life untainted by mass tourism (thought certainly tourism in some way) was well worth the effort

The unbelievably adorable daughter of the man at my brief homestay outside ZhongdianNujiang

I had to catch said sleeper bus because... I was due to meet my parents in Dali, 8 hours away, the next morning! Dedicated readers of this blog will be familiar with the Nujiang valley, where I did the anthropology research that made up my undergraduate thesis. I was very excited to return 2 years later, with my parents in tow. I missed the place and wanted to experience it again. More importantly, I missed the friends I had made during the tumultuous but incredibly rewarding time I spent there. And I was thrilled that I had the opportunity to share my unique experience, and this side of China (which few people get to see) with my parents-- in short, to introduce my American family to their and Pumi and Lisu alternates.

*After an exhausting but amazing trek up the valley from Dali (10 hours in a van, but what scenery!) we spent my mother's 60th birthday in Fugong, the geographic and culture center of the Lisu tribe in Yunnan. I took my parents to the market, walked them around town, and introduced them to Mr and Mrs X, who had nursed me to back to health when I had fallen ill with dysentary 2 years prior. Things went similarly wonderfully south in Liuku. After my cell phone was stolen in Taiwan, and all my Chinese contact information with it, I had been sure I would not be able to track down the numbers of all the friends I made in Nujiang. But a mixture of luck and guanxi (the complicated net of Chinese reciprocity that connects everyone socially and practically) connected me with everyone I could have hoped to see. The reunions were truly lovely.

Lisu with their bags and baskets in Fugong
My Fugong Family meets my real family-- Mr and Mrs X, me, and my parents

Nujiang scenery
*The highlight of the Nujiang trip was a 2-day stay with the Xiong family outside Lanping. Long time readers will remember Limei, my Pumi translator who attached herself to me during my stay in Liuku and with whom I stayed in the countryside at the very end of my time in Yunnan. Limei's family had long been inviting mine to come and visit, and this was an experience I wanted my family to have. So this time I brought my parents, too-- and an important gift, a sit-walker for Limei's mother, who is unable to walk due to debilitating arthritis.

Those two days were powerful in a way I'm not sure I can explain, especially not in a round-up format like this one. In depth description will have to wait until the full-length entries. But suffice to say that living with a peasant family for 48 hours was a remarkable experience for my parents (and for me, too, although I knew what to expect.) We ate meals cooked over an open fire from chickens slaughtered hours before; we slept in the simple wooden house lined with newspapers; we peed in the potato fields. At night a group of Pumi from the village descended, curious to see the visitors, and after many rice wine toasts took to singing and dancing around the fire and insisting that we join them. And the family was so, so grateful for the walker. They cannot treatment or surgery for Mrs. Xiong, who suffers terribly and gets around by dragging wooden stool across the ground. When I left, they called me their seventh child. "You are our American family now," were their parting words.

Dinner with the Xiong family

Xiong life
Our blended family together (My parents and I are wearing the traditional clothes we were given as gifts)
Mrs. Xiong playing a traditional Pumi instrument

*Our last stop was Lanping, where we arrived in time for the Sunday market, an amazing blend of vegetables, medicinal herbs that Yi and Hmong women bring from the high mountains, trinkets, practical items, and exotics (like jade from Burma.) A visit to the market was one of my favorite parts of a weekend in Lanping, and it was wonderful to be able to share this with my mother, who came along to wander.

Burmese jade traders
Some of the wares(note the porcupine quills)

I think these women are Yi, although they might be Hmong-- some kind of hill tribe wearing head gear I'd never seen before
We were reluctant to leave the market, but time was short-- we were due at the Dali airport to leave for Vietnam!

2/3

2009-09-02T17:19:00.005-03:00

Today, which I spent wandering the lovely streets of Vienna, Austria, marks 8 months of traveling for me, the 66% mark. It was a good day to reflect on my travels in the larger picture, and there's something on that topic that's worth saying.

I've met a lot of people during these 8 months and a lot of travelers. And I've talked to even more travelers than that, through internet forums, Twitter, etc. Many of these travelers spoke about fatigue, about burning out. Three, four months, they'd say, then they need a break. They get exhausted. They stop enjoying themselves. They are homesick or culturesick or actually sick.

But here's the thing: 8 months in, I still get a travel high every day. Literally, a day rarely goes by without at least one five minute period when I can't wipe a goofy, profoundly content smile off my face; when I am just so damn glad that I am where I am doing what I'm doing. Tonight I had a light dinner--cheese and ham toast and a tiny mocha, sweet and strong, at a gorgeous Viennese cafe that also happened to be one of the sets used in "Before Sunrise" (which is one of my favorite movies.) The atmosphere of the cafe was so perfect, and when I came out into the lane there were all sorts of other open air cafes packed with people eating and drinking beer and chatting. The sky was glowing with the last part of sunset, and when I got to my metro stop there was a free wine drinking event happening sponsored by a bank and someone just... poured me a glass of wine for standing and gaping at it all, smiling goofily, like I always do.

I sometimes think that I've been happier this year, even with just these daily bursts of travel high, then I was for a long time in my life before. That might be true, and it might be that I can't compare lives that are so profoundly different. But keeping in mind this legendary travel fatigue that I just don't feel and these daily sublime moments, here's something important: I know this is the right thing for me to be doing this year. Readers that know me are aware that this trip might not have happened if I had not had a series of failures Spring 2008, several fellowships that fell through just before the last step. Yes, I sometimes think about what would have happened if I had surmounted those last obstacles that kept me from a Watson or a Fulbright. I don't doubt I would have had amazing adventures on those paths as well, but when I go down that road I don't wish for anything different than what I've made for myself this year. And for me, the perpetually regretful, the one alwazs wondering what if, that is no small thing.

Eight months in. I have ups and downs, sometimes big ones. I had a short period this summer where I was happy but missing that everyday high, but something in Turkey brought it back for me. I'm looking into these last four months now, with trepidation, sure. It won't be easy, it will be tiring, it might be lonely or disappointing. But I'm so glad I'm here.

Origins

2009-08-29T08:59:00.001-03:00

Did you know that the "cravat" and the tradition of wearing a tie comes from southern Croatia?

Or that the word "karst" comes from rock formations found first in the Kras river region of Slovenia?

Or that the word "ghetto" was first used to describe an area where Jews lived in 16th century Venice that had once been a metal working facility (known in Venetian as "geto")?

... neither did I! But it's been a very educational, and totally beautiful, month.

More later!

Who says you can't eat cheaply in Venice?

2009-08-25T05:39:00.002-03:00

I went on a shopping trip last night to stock up for a few days spent couch surfing here in what is supposed to be one of the most expensive cities in Europe. And while I can personally attest to having drunk a E3 Coca-Cola (that is, almost $5) in the last week, I had slightly more success on the grocery front.

My list:

3 nectarines
3 carrots
1 2-serving bottle tomato sauce
1 bag pasta
1 package pre-sliced salami
1 loaf prepackaged bread
1 2-serving container yogurt
1 package wafer cookies
1 chocolate bar

And all for E10! So that next time, maybe I'll be able to afford that $5 Coke.

Many happy returns

2009-08-22T17:24:00.002-03:00

There haven't been many opportunities for returns on this trip. Unidirectional travel means always going to a new place, a new adventure, a new language or currency. West, always west. So arriving in Venice today felt different. I've never been to Venice before, but I have been to Italy. It was 15 years ago, but it was with the same people who accompanied me stepping off the boat from northern Croatia this morning-- my parents.

It's almost too simplistic to say that a lot of things changed in the 15 years since I went on my first trip abroad to Tuscany, a timid 3rd grader with childhood anxiety disorder. I grew up, of course, and my parents aged. The EU didn't exist then, and we paid for our spaghetti carbonara and Chianti classico in Lira. But that trip changed me, too. When I left the US I was a kid scared of everything, from the dark to the waves on the beach. But international travel unlocked something in me, and what fears hadn't dissolved by the time I returned slowly gave way in the next months and years.

Travel continues to unlock my strengths, teach me to be happy in ways I had no idea I could be. Sitting in Piazza San Margherita today in the Dorsoduro neighborhood of Venice watching night fall, little old ladies making their daily constitutionals, boys kicking around a soccer ball, couple strolling under the tolling of the Saturday mass bells, I was reminded of that.

One return deserves another. I've been away from this blog awhile, a break due to technological difficulties, internet shortage, logistics, and writer's block. But I'm back in Italy, and back here for my 4 remaining months of joyous exploration. Many happy returns.

Hello from the Turkish Mediterranean

2009-07-24T10:56:00.001-03:00

Factoid of the day: Men and women who don't know each other can't be seated together on Turkish public buses. Makes for quite a logic puzzle for the conductors as passengers get on and off. Also: Turkish buses serve you ice cream.

REWIND: Japan

2009-07-14T11:56:00.001-03:00

Continuing my recent blogging vein with a tantalizing taste of my Japan adventures.... Some highlights:

Osaka
*I was lucky enough to have a university friend, JJ, to stay with during my time in Japan. JJ even trekked out from Tottori (a small city where he was teaching English) to Osaka to meet me at the airport and spend the weekend in Osaka. That meant that instead of affording a sense of deep, overwhelming anxiety, jumping head first into Japanese society was exciting, fascinating, and generally great.

The Osaka skyline
*To start with, we had a fantastic night out, trying all sorts of delicious Osakan foods, wandering the streets of the city's ultra-trendy neighborhoods, stopping in a British-themed bar where I had my first umeshu (totally delicious plum wine), admiring the crazy out-there Japanese fashions at a particularly notorious intersection, and capping the evening with--what else--karaoke

*JJ convinced me that I had to experience a "capsule hotel," a unique Japanese experience where in a hotel-goer stays in what is essentially an enclosed train berth (but much more high-tech and futuristic feeling) in a huge hall full of said berths. The hotel had an extraordinary otherworldly feel to it (more on this in my later post on Osaka), replete with super-high tech gadgets (don't get me started on Japanese toilets...). In the women's bath I met Violetta, a Romanian mathematician with a Japanese husband who invited me to come see her in Matsue, a small city near Tottori

An awkward photo of my capsule* JJ and I splashed out on tickets for the semi-annual sumo wrestling tournament (which is held only once a year in southern Japan.) It was spectacular, a complete cultural immersion, an event which in many ways felt like it could have been taking place centuries in the past. Completely worth the money.

At the sumo tournament
Nara

*JJ and I took a day trip to Nara, where there are some temples and lots of tame deer walking around. The temples include both the oldest and largest standing wooden structures in the world. They are soberly gorgeous examples of Buddhist architecture (and, thanks to a course on the topic, JJ was able to regale me with the wonders of that architecture)

The largest wooden structure in the world (the dots are people)

JJ feeding a deer
The one on the left is the oldest standing wooden structure in the world

Tottori

*Tottori is a little city about 2.5 hours northwest of Osaka. To say it doesn't get much in the way of tourism is an understatement. In fact, I met a Tottori-ite in Australia and told him I was planning to visit in March. He looked at me and said, "Why?!" Nevertheless, I spent more than a week with JJ just soaking in everyday Japanese life. I met his fellow teachers, tried lots of delicious Japanese food (including sushi, for the first time!), went to a local onsen (Japanese bath), explored the fabulous local toy museum, and relished the feeling of being in one place for awhile.

Going to "kaiten sushi" ("conveyor belt" sushi)
Octopus at a fish market in Tottori
At the fantastic toy museum in Tottori
*When JJ wasn't working, we went sightseeing together. He showed me his favorite tea house/garden, and we went together to the 'famous' Tottori dunes and on a lovely boat ride on the coast. I also got to see his taiko (traditional Japanese drumming) troupe preparing for a big performance.

The coast near Tottori
JJ practices with his taiko troupe
Matsue

*JJ had long-standing plans to go to South Korea for a long weekend, so I made good on Violetta's invitation and took the train to Matsue, a city a few hours from Tottori. I stayed in a ryokan, or old-fashioned Japanese inn, and during the days Violetta showed me around her favorite Matsue sights. We took a walk around the lake, visited the castle (one of the largest in Japan), went to a beautiful temple complex/tea garden, ate at an incredibly charming 9-seat restaurant and splurged on a pre-set menu with all the delicacies from the lake, and went for a drive with her husband to the stunning Sakaiminato coast.

The most adorable restaurant
Mother and daughter who work at the restaurant
Sunset on the Sakaiminato coast
Matsue castle by night, complete with cherry blossoms and people having celebratory drinking parties (called "hanami") underneath them
Mochigase
*I was lucky enough to have a few chances to visit Mochigase, a picture-perfect where JJ taught part of the time. The first time I visited the school to watch JJ teach, the second time for the Mochigase doll festival, and the third time to give back to the school and help JJ make a giant English-language poster including several of my travel photos from the trip thus far.

*Visiting JJ's school was great fun. In each class he introduced me and had me tell the students a little bit about my trip. Then I helped them play a game of English grammar battle ship. During free periods we chatted with the other teachers and sat in on a music lesson.

Walking back from school through the adorable streets of Mochigase
*Happily, the annual Mochigase doll festival, a spring fertility festival which celebrates women's strength, took place about half way through my time in Japan. During the festival, all the houses in town put out beautiful displays of traditional dolls, people float similar dolls down the river to pray for their daughters' growth, and those daughters dress up in their best kimono for the same purpose. The day itself was beautiful and warm, and I was maybe the only Westerner in all of the proceedings. I wandered through the scene taking pictures, ate some delicious homemade mochi (pounded potato-flour candy), and set my own doll off down the river to pray for strength for me and any daughters to come.

A beautiful example of the traditional doll displays

Everywhere I looked there were little Japanese girls wearing kimono and having a cute-off contest. (They all won.)

Floating the dolls down the river
Kyoto

*I spent my last long weekend in Japan exploring the wonders of Kyoto. First I met up with a fellow Boston couchsurfer, Mike, and we explored the fantastic Shinto shrine-filled mountain of Fushimi Inari and walking the geisha district in awe of the beautiful tea houses.

Shinto gates at Fushimi Inari
The stunning beauty of Gion geisha district tea houses in cherry blossom season
*For a couple of days after that I stayed with Mami, the Japanese girlfriend of one of JJ's co-teachers, and we spent an exhausting and amazing 11-hour day walking all over the city exploring temples, a Zen garden, and the Temple; celebrating the sakura (cherry blossom festival) with harp music and traditional food; and capping the evening off with a mountain temple complex, the Kyoto castle, and an exquisite (if expensive) meal in the Pontocho bar district.

The golden temple

A shinto shrine complex with its sakura in full bloom and its festival booths up to celebrate
The mountain-top temple by night
*Finally, JJ arrived in Kyoto, and we spent a couple of days exploring his former home (he had studied in the city for a year during University), going to a traditional fan dance performance, having our own hanami with some other Wesleyan students on the same program, and splurging on tickets for the miyako odori, the semi-annual dance performance put on by competing geisha houses in the city to showcase the talent of their new students.

The fan dance performance

Our very own hanami
A scene from the miyako odori
A geisha spotted on the street near Gion

REWIND: Taiwan

2009-07-09T07:46:00.005-03:00

In keeping with my new blogging feature, here is a quickie-rewind version of my adventures in Taiwan, a whirlwind recounting that will hopefully whet your appetite for more detailed posts in the future.

Taipei, part 1
*Joined by my university friend, Mel, I spent a few days exploring Taipei's old neighborhoods, many temples, and hotsprings. We spent a lovely evening in Danshui in the northern part of the city, a community resting on a riverbank where fishing boats ply the waters and a carnival-like atmosphere rules the open-air shops that line the shore.

*No trip to Taipei would be complete without a visit to the t night market, where a multitude of delicious food and cheap fashions await your discovery. My favorite part of the night market: very real looking rolls (the bread kind) made out of foam rubber, sold at virtually every stand. Neither Mel nor I could divine their purpose-- they all had silly faces piped onto them with brown ink, so they couldn't be for tricking your friends. Maybe, we thought, they're like pet rocks?

Worshipping at a temple in Taipei

A man fishing at Danshui
Some of the wonders at the night market
Sun Moon Lake
*Coincidentally, I have several friends who ended up in Taiwan this year, either teaching English or returning to their families to plot their next post-university move. So my next step moving south from Taipei was to meet up with Sam, a very old friend from middle school. He showed me around his neighborhood, Jhubei, and then we took a brief weekend trip to SunMoon Lake, one of the foremost tourist attractions in Taiwan. The lake featured an interesting aboriginal population, several beautiful lakeside temples, and a good deal of the misty-mountain scenery that one associates with Taiwan. On Sunday before parting ways we took a boatride along the lake. Very pleasant, indeed.

Beautiful masks hanging in one of the aboriginal villages lining the lake
A ferocious lion guards a temple

Lake scenery
Kaohsiung
*From Sun Moon lake I took the train south to visit another university friend, Maya, where she was teaching in Kaohsiung, an industrial city in the southwest. I got to go to school with her for a day to see her teach, and I also spent a lovely day roaming the city with a couchsurfer who took me to the top of the highest hill in the area for a beautiful view of the city and also introduced me to PigDog Cafe, a haven for the city's independent thinkers, half art-gallery half cafe. It was a day of great conversation and scenery. On the last day before I left Kaohsiung, Maya and I went to Lotus Lake, which is famous for its temple- and shrine-lined shores. There we stumbled on the birthday of a local god, and were treated to a live orchestral performance, after which we were made to eat many delicious bean-paste sweets and other goodies.

My new Kaohsiung-native friend, Jolie

Along the shores of Lotus Lake

Tainan
*While in Kaohsiung, I took a day trip to Tainan, a city filled with temples. I spent the day wandering among a variety of fascinating, beautiful temples, a day tempered only by the fact that my cell phone was stolen in the afternoon as I was preparing to return to Kaohsiung.

Taitung
*The highlight of my time in Taitung was the opportunity to attend an Aboriginal Taiwanese wedding. Through a series of convoluted connections originating with people I met on couch surfing, I was invited into the hills to a wedding celebrating of the Bunun people. A German couchsurfer picked me up on an old-fashioned Kawasaki motorbike (the first motorcycle I'd ever ridden) and sped me into the hills, where we feasted with a cast of hundreds, eventually retiring to the bride's family's house and then to an unlikely karaoke location. It was in this way that I found myself huddled, freezing in the chill of a Taiwanese spring night in a tiny house/shack that passed for a karaoke club, perched on the edge of a deep gorge that divides southern Taiwan in half

Wedding festivities

The East Coast-- Hualien and Taroko
*On the recommendation of friends, fellow travelers, and guidebooks I took an extremely scenic bus trip up the eastern coast of Taiwan, where I couchsurfed with a very friendly Taiwanese med student who came out to me, locked her keys in her sixth-floor apartment, and engaged in an extremely daring/foolhardy caper to get back in (which included swinging briefly off the roof of her building, much to my terror)-- all in one night. Then I taught her the word "badass" and we went to another of Taiwan's fabulous night markets.

*Taroko Gorge has got to be one of the most impressive and stunning places I've been. Short on time and independent transport, I joined a small tour for a day and soaked in the remarkable scenery, which I utterly failed to capture with my little point-and-shoot camera.

From the Hualien night market
Not doing Taroko Gorge any justice

Nan'ao
*Given my interest in aboriginal culture, Maya agreed to help me get in touch with one of her fellow Fulbrighters who was working in an aboriginal school in Nan'ao, a little southeast of Taipei. I stayed with Julia for a few days, and she was an amazing host. On the first night we took her scooter out to the beach and made a fire, eating dumplings and roasting tiny, sugary marshmallows among the dunes. The second day I wandered the town and visited the school where Julia taught. And on the last day we took her scooter into the countryside, where we climbed up a river valley to a beautiful waterfall and then road to a hotspring.

Language learning at the Nan'ao school

If you look really closely you can see Julia on top of the waterfall, on the left side
Taipei, again
*I returned to Taipei, and to Mel, for another few days at the end of my Taiwan sojourn. This time we visited several museums and went to the top of Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. Nothing quite like that feeling, being higher than pretty much everybody. That soaring feeling gave me a good push, energy that would last me until I had landed in my next destination-- Osaka, Japan.

The tallest building in the world, modeled after a bamboo shoot

View from the top

REWIND: New Zealand Wrap-Up

2009-07-05T11:52:00.003-03:00

In line with my new blogging policy, here is what you missed at the tail end of my month in New Zealand:

Around East Cape

* I spent 5 days driving around New Zealand's East Cape in a camper van with a recovering paraplegic Finnish ex-pat named Henry. Henry was definitely a character-- opinionated, fiercely independent, mildly homophobic and anti-Semitic, but not the worst travel companion a girl could end up with for 5 days. And his camper van took me to some damn beautiful places!

-I couchsurfed in Gisborne (where the movie "Whalerider" was filmed) with a lovely mother-and-daughter duo in their beautiful half-finished farm house, enjoyed dinner outside in the vegetable patch and one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever had the privilege to see
-I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to wade out onto a coral reef and feed enormous wild stingrays. I swear, stingrays nudging your knees looking for food feel exactly like attention-seeking cats. One was so excited that when I stuck my hand in the water he sucked on my forearm and gave me a stingray hickey

The hickey perpetrator
-The next day we drove through some beautiful scenery-- Tolaga Bay, with its gorgeous white cliffs; a blighted, virtually abandoned town that was also the home of a gorgeous Maori church, every inch of the walls and ceiling completely carved, inlaid, and woven

Tolaga Bay

The beautiful Maori church
-The day after that I woke early and climbed a small mountain to the East Cape lighthouse, the easternmost point on land (meaning: not counting Tonga) where I was one of the first 8 people in the entire world to witness February 29, 2009

Sunrise

More East Cape scenery-- Maori culture and beautiful views

*As a parting gift to finish my time in New Zealand, I decided to treat myself to a trail ride in Whakatane, a Maori-rich area on a turquoise bay. Half way through the ride, however, I was thrown from my horse and experienced temporary amnesia. I could remember who I was, that I was in New Zealand, but not much else. Not the name of the town, not where I was staying, not how I had gotten to the horse farm that morning. Slowly the facts came trickling back, although I still don't remember falling off the horse. I spent a distressing evening at the ER to make sure there was nothing more serious than a light concussion. But: it was all covered by New Zealand's lovely socialist accident insurance!

*I treated myself to a private hotel room in Auckland to rest, lay low, and nurse a very sore back. And after a few days I packed up my things and headed to the next stop: Taiwan!

New continent, new approach-- Introducing the Rewind

2009-07-05T11:18:00.002-03:00

Well, time plods along and I find myself through the Middle East and onto Greece. And yet this blog has stalled. I've been able to get my journaling habits back to speed, but this additional (and more public) offshoot has been dead in the water.

I'm in Europe now, exploring the Greek islands at the outset of the last leg of my trip. More and more I feel overwhelmed about the amount there is to tell all of you while I'm traveling, and these past few weeks that's mean blogging paralysis, to be very honest. So, at the recommendation of a trusted reader, I am introducing another new feature on this blog-- REWIND. I intend to give you the brief highlights of each of the countries I've yet to share with you, and some choice pictures as well. I intend these features as a way to catch readers up and to give what I hope is a tantalizing taste of what will come once I finish my trip and find myself back in the states-- full-length, full-detail entries, great stories, lots of photos. In this way I'll be able to continue in present tense without feeling torn on both ends.

Enjoy!

A quick word from Indira Ghandi International Airport-- Definitely Doing It Again

2009-06-14T19:20:00.002-03:00

When my friend Ali got back from India her first trip she told me that she had met other travellers who claimed that "I-N-D-I-A" stands for I'm Never Doing It Again. Well, it hasn't been easy (although of course I never expected that) and in some ways, specifically having to do with time limits, it was disappointing-- these are factors that I will look forward to exploring in future entries. But it was fascinating, too, vibrant and beautiful and utterly different. I participated in a wedding, I saw the Ganga Arati in Haridwar (a ritual for goddess Ganga of the river involving thousands of people), I bathed fully clothed in the Ganges, I took a 22 hour jeep ride through remote Jammu & Kashmir, and I visited a stunningly beautiful lake 2/3 of which is in Tibet.

I can't wait to tell (and show) all of it to you. And I will definitely be coming back, wiser than I was and for longer than I had this time.

For now I have an hour to kill until my flight to Amman, Jordan. After 4 months I am leaving Asia and moving west to something entirely different. As always, a new adventure awaits.

Meet Appy Fizz (Say What?: India Edition)

2009-06-06T11:14:00.004-03:00

Dedicated readers of this blog will remember the entry in which I faithfully recreated the label of a local New Zealand soft drink called Lemon and Paeroa (sadly, given the recent downfalls of this blog, you may still be able to see said entry on the front page, despite my having drunk the L&P almost three months ago.) Here in India I recently came across another interesting soft drink, this one by the name of Appy Fizz (a faux-sparkling apple cider sort of thing.) Although this one isn't quite so packed full of local slang, it's still an interesting look into English-language advertising in India. (To make sure this wasn't an import I scrutinized the bottle until I found a little product stamp that reads "Refresh India" and a blurb below the nutrition facts that states that the drink was manufactured in a small village in Haryana state.)

And I quote:
"The Apple of my I
Hi, I present to you the new + evolved Appy Fizz. Cooler than ever before. And even more good looking in a swanky new branded label. Made with the finest handpicked apples, it's a favourite of the cool. So let's bring out the ice and party on! - Cheers, A.F.

I LIKE Weekends, blind dates, and being a superstar (in front of my mirror).
I DISLIKE Bouncers, teleshopping, and scripted reality shows.
MY FAV ONELINERS Party makes man perfect
MY ADDRESS Your refrigerator
CAUSE, IT'S COOL!
Save Trees: Without trees, there'd be no hammocks, no film stars running around them, no gravity + I wouldn't have been discovered either. So, plant trees, get breeze.
Let's meet at [appy fizz website] and take this further."

I think that last part is the best/oddest.

Food for thought

2009-06-06T04:58:00.002-03:00

Here in Manali, in the north of Himachal Pradesh state, India, I have been taking a few days off to enjoy the mountain views and ready myself for a trip into Kashmir-- I leave for a 20-hour jeep ride tonight at 2:30 am. One thing I have been doing to relax is watching episodes of "Long Way Down" on YouTube. It's a series about Ewan MacGregor (the movie star) and his best friend riding their motorcycles from north Scotland to the tip of South Africa. The series is a sequel to "Long Way Around," in which they rode their motorcycles from London to New York City going east through all of north central Asia, a series I watched as part of my mental preparation for this trip.

Anyway, in the episode I am currently enjoying, Ewan is mentally preparing to cross into Africa the next day for the next leg of his trip, and he said something useful to those of us engaged in long-term travel:
"
"I embarked on this journey in complete excitement about Africa and then was scared by several people who we met or encountered through our prep who scared the bejeezus out of us. And then I've realized: if that's the case you shouldn't go. Either you do it, or you don't go. You know? And then you have to give yourself into it, take it as it comes. And if there's scary things that happen, there are scary things that happen. And that's why you're out there in a sense. You're out there for adventure, and it becomes a question of how you deal with the situation you're in. You can't control what's going to happen. And the whole point is that you're out to let what happens happen, that's why youre here. If you knew it was going to be a safe and smooth passage, would there be any point doing it?"

Another travel philosophy to tuck away beside the "killer octopus" theory. Quite useful to those of us who tend toward travel anxieties.

FLASHBACK-- Napier, NZ: What decade is it, anyway?

2009-06-05T00:19:00.004-03:00

As I mentioned in a previous entry, the format of this blog is changing. From now on I will be simultaneously writing about what I'm doing in the present (and where I'm doing it), as well as occasionally presenting forays into the missing 3+ months of travel this blog has yet to cover. This is the first of the FLASHBACK entries I promised.

Late February (approximately February 20)--

When we left off in New Zealand, I had just decided to take the riskier option for my travels through the North Island toward Auckland. The relatively remote region of East Cape had caught my attention when the G family, with whom I'd stayed in Nelson, recommended it to me. When I did more research, the appeal only grew: the region boasted rich Maori culture unspoiled by the crass tourism ventures that pop up in larger North Island communities such as Rotorua; it also was one of the most stunning areas on the island, and in New Zealand that's saying something. The cape was large, however, and not well-serviced by tourist busses. I wasn't sure I could make the trip alone.

Enter couchsurfing, my longtime savior. Heikki, a Finnish Kiwi expat who went by the name Henry, posted on a New Zealand message board looking for someone to accompany him on a campervan trip around East Cape. I hemmed and hawed-- although Henry had all positive recommendations on his couchsurfing profile, he was still a strange, older man, and the situation had obvious inherent risks. But after several telephone conversations with Henry, as well as consultations with my parents and friends, I decided to take the plunge. He was waiting in Napier, a city about 6 hours north of Wellington by bus. Leaving the comfort of Moira's home behind, I rode north into a multi-day adventure.

As it turned out, I had very little to worry about. Henry was completely non-threatening, a recovering paraplegic whose enormous inner strength had brought him back to walking with canes when doctors said it was impossible. Really, he only posed a threat when it came to my peace of mind--he was mildly anti-Semitic, mildly homophobic, and generally a little bit of a jerk. But as traveling companions we got on reasonably well, and in the end the places his campervan took me were well worth the effort it took to steer clear of the necessary topics...

I knew little to nothing about Napier when I arrived. I didn't know, for example, that the entire town was leveled in an earthquake in the early 1930s and had therefore been rebuilt completely in that era's current style, art deco. Napier is therefore, among some circles, known as the art deco capital of the world. It might have been useful for me to know this beforehand, but my ignorance made arriving to find the annual Napier Art Deco festival about to begin even more delightful.

For one weekend every year, people from all over New Zealand and beyond--possibly everyone in the southern hemisphere who owns an antique car-- converge on Napier for four days of old-fashioned (in every sense of the phrase) fun. There are big band concerts, barbershop quartet performances, antique car parades, and costume contests. For yes, celebrants get into the spirit by getting out their best flapper dresses and bowler hats, completing the transformation of the town into its last-century self.

I arrived in Napier from rainy Wellington to find the weather clear and a jazz band playing in the old-timey band shell. I spent the night in Henry's camper van (the rest of the nights on our trip he slept outside in his camping hammock) with no incident and the next morning was taken up wandering the town admiring the lovely architecture, coming across such fun surprises as corner girls' choruses, morris dancers, and a restored steam engine, and doing some fantastic people watching.

I think some photos would give you a better idea of the atmosphere than anything else. So without further ado:

An outdoor jazz brunch

These pictures really beg the question: what decade is it, anyway? Switch them to black and white and I don't think you could be sure

Art Deco at its best

Barbershop stylings on the sidewalk

The antique car parade

Waiting to be judged at the costume contest
I think this one might be my favorite

The sun was shining intensely on Hawke's Bay as I finished my morning wander and caught up with Henry in the parking lot where we'd camped for the night. He was ready with maps, and we set out on the first leg of our tour around East Cape, heading for what many consider to be the easternmost city in the world-- Gisborne.

A quick word from Dehra Dun

2009-05-31T06:20:00.003-03:00

Only a moment to spare here in Dehra Dun, a largeish city in Uttarakhand state north of Delhi.

I spent all last night at a traditional Indian wedding. It lasted until 4:30 AM-- I lasted until shortly before that. There was a procession through the streets complete with marching band, drums, and pony cart; lots of food; lots of beautiful women in gorgeous saris (both families had backgrounds in Rajasthan, where the clothing is especially elaborate); lots of interesting rituals lasting far into the night. It was nothing short of stunning. Pictures and details to come.

Marigolds and a tricycle: Delhi first impressions

2009-05-28T05:08:00.004-03:00

When I arrived in Delhi last night a little before 8 PM the back-of-seat screens in the airplane said the outside air temperature was 37 C, or about 98 F. It is the height of the hot seasons here. The plane was filled with saris, salwar, turbans. I counted three other Caucasians, which was interesting because the "foreign passport holders" line was quite long. We all stumbled off the plane together, through security and an H1N1 check. I waited 45 minutes for my bag, which had been (thoughtfully, I guess) taken off the plane as a "priority" and placed to the side without my knowledge.

"Trying to confuse you as pleasantly as possible--that's India," said Faith, an old friend I'm staying with here in Delhi. She didn't say this until an hour after I'd landed, though, when we had gotten into a cab that looked like it had been produced around 1968--all rusting navy body and rounded bumpers. I had emerged from the baggage claim to a forest of waving "WELCOME _____" name cards, but there were no blonde curls to be seen. I panicked: Faith and I hadn't set up a meeting plan because the airlines were jerking me around until only an hour before I left for the Hong Kong airport. What's more, I somehow also had neither her phone number nor her address. It was all my fears about arrival in India come to life, but I managed to hold my cool. I got some money; I borrowed a cab driver's cell phone and shamefacedly called the mother of a good friend of mine, who lives in Delhi. But before I had to slink, deeply embarassed, to her house for the night, I saw Faith waving her pale arms out one of the exits. She had sent me an e-mail, too late, telling me that you have to pay to greet guests inside the airport.

We drove for a half hour through the hot, dusty night to south Delhi, "where all the film stars and politicians keep homes." Faith and her boyfriend, Alim, live there, in a one-room apartment with terrace and open kitchen, simple and small but comfortable. He prepared a late dinner and we drifted off to sleep to the hum of the air cooler, a machine that uses hay, water, and fans to cool the air in a room.

The walk to work this morning, an anti-AIDs/drugs NGO, was a revelation in itself. Everything was new. The women, almost every one in bright saris, taking a morning constitutional or collecting mud in baskets on their heads. The children, playing in the streets-- one particularly bright image a small boy, thin and lithe, on a dustry tricycle with a chain of marigolds around his neck. A cow, as big is our rickshaw, trotting between cars. A pony cart carrying farmers and produce into the city.

We've spent the morning at the NGO office, drinking chai and trying to plan what has become a distressingly short trip here (what was originally planned between 25-30 days now has to be 18 because of my visa expiration.) For lunch we went upstairs to the rehab, where the patients (all men) greeted Faith genially or slept on their cots in the heat, and ate dahl and rice with our hands. (Okay, they gave me a spoon. One step at a time.) It's only 2 PM, but this morning has already been plenty of education. And this afternoon: Old Delhi.

Putting my money where my mouth is

2009-05-28T04:55:00.003-03:00

So: I spoke about changes to this blog. When I started out in January I wrote about my goals. I wanted to write shorter posts more often, posts that were not just about what I did where, but were also reflections. essays, musings, jokes. Obviously, traveling the way I have has gotten in the way of that, but it doesn't mean the ideal has disappeared.

Thence come these changes, which I hope will put me back on the road to that blogging ideal. What changes, you ask? Here's what I have in mind:

I think we can all agree that catch-up has bogged me down and has to take a backseat to current action. At this point I am more than 5 countries--countries full of amazing adventures, crazy obstacles, and lots of new friends--behind. Thus, from this point on I will blog mostly in the present tense, as things happen, and add catch-up entries as often as I can. Those entries will have titles that include the header "FLASHBACK." It will make chronology on this blog a little bit more difficult to follow, but I will do my best to include dates in order to help everyone along.

I don't know how easy the next goal will be, given that in my current location (India) internet access is often hard to find. But: I'm also hoping to include more short, casual entries, in the vein of the quick notes I posted in January from Australia. If possible I will also include a regular "FLASH FORWARD" feature-- a picture from the coming entries, one of the lamost 5000 pictures I've taken in the last five months. I have some beautiful things to show you.

The Wonder of Wellington

2009-05-22T00:15:00.002-03:00

Following my "breather" in Nelson, I hopped a bus-and-ferry combo across the choppy but stunning channel separating New Zealand's north and south islands, landing in Wellington. As an Anthropology major and avid traveler, I had several reasons to be excited by this next step in my time in NZ. I had visited once before with my parents, but at that point we had focused largely on seeing the gorgeous sights of the south island. We had spent only a few days on the north island, had seen very little of the Maori culture that permeates it or anything outside the typical Auckland-Rotorua tourist trail. I was excited to take a longer chunk of time to experience north island life and learn more about Maori culture in the bargain. On the ferry I took photos and read some travel notes, struggling to decide between two equally exciting routes through the island. One would take me around the remote East Cape region; the other would involve crossing the famous Tongariro national park (also known as Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings movies), possibly by horseback.

All aboard the Inter-island ferry in Picton

The northernmost point of the south island, as seen from the ferry

As my first north island stop, I stayed with Moira, my mother's friend and colleague; her husband, Dave; and her adult son, Rob. They made me a temporary part of their family for the next week: I had my own little room in their house, which was located in heavily Polynesian suburb of Wellington called Naenae. Dave was what I would call a sort of "old school" Kiwi, constantly saying jocular and mildly offensive things, chain smoking, ribbing his wife (or "taking the piss," as he would say.) It seemed a comfortable marriage-- it was Moira's third-- and there was a constant march of their many, many grandkids through the ramshackle house.

I had "tea" (dinner), complete with "pudding" (dessert, usually not actually pudding) with the family most nights; I watched how they related to each other as a Kiwi family; I participated in the genial "piss taking." In the morning I listened to the national talk radio call-in show with Dave, discussing topics of the day. In the evening I caught up on TV, especially appreciating the Maori language/Maori-centric programming-- my favorite was Mr. Ed dubbed into Maori. And during the day I would walk through Naenae, filled with unfamiliar Rarotongan/Samoan signs, and take the commuter train into Wellington to explore.

A free clinic in Naenae
I spent a couple afternoons wandering around the quay area of Wellington harbor to Te Papa ("the Nation") which is arguably New Zealand's foremost museum, although there are certainly some Aucklanders would have something to say about that. (Wellington and Auckland have a long running and mildly silly rivalry-- a Wellington newspaper article I read claimed that "Wellington has streets full of arts and theater, Auckland has the cast of Shortland Street [a Kiwi soap opera]")

Te Papa was like every kind of museum rolled into one. One floor had an engrossing, informative exhibit about volcanoes/earthquakes, including an earthquake simulation. The building also housed a natural history museum, featuring stuffed versions of most of NZ native animals including a giant squid (!); a cultural museum with fully reconstructed Maori marae and interesting exhibits about other Pacific Islanders; and an art museum with modern displays and a really well-curated show of Maori and Pakeha art, showing how the two interacted as the groups did as well, from 1800s up through today. And the best part: it was free! Which meant I did not have to feel obligated to take it all in in one day--and, indeed, I spent parts of three days exploring the monstrous fantasticness of it all.

I took some time after my first visit to Te Papa to wander Cuba Street, and alternative heart of Wellington. Unfortunately, due to an ill-timed but totally worthwhile visit to the Cubita coffee house, a Cuba-themed cafe with fantastic coffee and an Iraqi owner, the stores on Cuba St had just closed when I arrived. But still I wandered, seeing a street filled with things I love-- old clothing and record shops, antiques, coffee houses, cafes. The best part was the random street art everywhere, something I came to love about Wellington. I ate crepes at a little stand and got lost on the winding streets that head up hill to the ancient volcano's peak, but didn't mind. The late afternoon sun felt wonderful and there was so much to see.

Wellington Waterfront
Cuba St, Wellington
Some choice street art

In my opinion, one of the peak experiences available to a traveler is the chance to meet a familiar face in a far-flung location (and it's even better when that face belongs to a dear friend!) A few days later I had just that pleasure, meeting my good friend Rania, who was in NZ with her boyfriend WWOOFing for several months, in downtown Wellington. The day was sunny and busy, everything tinged with the mild miracle of the two of us meeting so far from home. In the morning, we took a cable car up to one of highest points in the city, to see all over Wellington. We walked back down through a beautiful botanical garden to the NZ legislative building (which locals call "The Hive") and had a lovely outdoor lunch before going to see a "question session," in which MPs (representatives in the parliamentary system) field political questions from their peers and constituents.

"The Hive"

Rania and I thought it would be very interesting to see how parliament functions, but we had an ulterior motive: these sessions were famous for becoming, shall we say... "spirited."

And we were not disappointed! Often after an answer half of the gallery could be heard grumbling, clapping, or yelling "hear hear!", like some sort of deranged Greek chorus. And sometimes they descended into insults. My favorite of these involved one MP accusing another of becoming "the Marie Antoinette of education." Another time, in regards to a contentious bill to repeal a law requiring schools to promote healthy food, one representative fired off this gem: "So what you're saying is, our kids can smoke as much dope as they like but they can't eat a cake once in awhile." Rania and I loved it.

To cap off the day, we took a cheap ferry across Wellington's sheltered harbor to to Days Bay. Or at least that's what we tried to do, but we accidentally got off one stop too early at Seatoun, a sleepy and adorable but not particularly happening town. Moira's husband had told me that Eastborne, the settlement at Days Bay, would have cafes and arts/crafts-- but Seatoun had a dairy, a book shop, a closed cafe, and two hours until the next ferry. So we walked and chatted, eventually making our way to the next village over, where we found a bakery to stop in and pass the time. Back at the ferry, we convinced the ticket man to let us stop in Days Bay after all. It was also beautiful, although we didn't get to spend much time there.

At the end of a long, great day, aww

A few days late, knowing my interest in Maori culture, Moira took me to a Maori immersion school, where students learn Maori language and culture before they learn to read English-- a contraversial but very successful model. As a sweet, very shy young Maori girl led us from classroom to classroom I felt suddenly nervous, suddenly very aware of my white skin and my privilege in being allowed to just barge into the day to day workings of the school. Nonetheless, they were very welcoming as I toured around an art class where they painted traditional symbols, a kindergarten where little Maori kids learned about traffic lights-- what they do, what you call them, the name of the colors. We didn't stay very long, and I felt fascinated, intrigued, let down by the surface nature of the experience. It would not be the last time I experienced such frustration.

At the school- a Maori language poster about nutrition
In the last few days of my week in Wellington, after a long period of agonizing decision making, I decided to take the risky path and join a complete stranger (well, almost-- I'll explain later) for a tour around the North Island's remote East Cape region. I spent the last days planning, relaxing, and going up to the blueberry farm where Rania and Colin were working to see them. That day was warm and sunny, and we picked blueberries to eat with ice cream and explored the charming farm, complete with a huge rooster named Dumbledore and an enormous, gorgeous old German Shepherd called Bilbo Barkins (awesome.)

On the Blueberry Farm

At the end of the day at the farm I sat on the benches (pictured above) and talked with Rania and Colin while they worked on a painting project. We were discussing travel decision making, the necessity of taking risks, and Colin said something that would inform both the next week I spent in New Zealand and the next several months of my travel.

"No good stories come from things that go as planned," he remarked. "'I went to the Caribbean on vacation and came back.' is not a good story. 'I went to the Caribbean on vacation and got eaten by an ENORMOUS KILLER OCTOPUS' is totally a good story."

I thought about that-- I thought about it a lot, and the more I thought the more I knew he was right. So the next day I jumped into the mouth of the octopus, as it were, and got on a bus to meet Heikki, a Finnish ex-pat who goes by the name Henry, for a four-day camper van tour around the East Cape. It was a decision I would not regret.

Turn and face the strain

2009-05-13T13:41:00.002-03:00

Well, I think we can all agree that although I am trying my best (and occasionally succeeding) to turn out a good quality blog, this is not a sustainable model. My parents left a few days ago after their 1/3-mark trip with me through Yunnan and Vietnam (yes, I am THAT behind) and this seems like as good a time as any to turn over a new leaf. I've started trying to journal again, and blogging comes along with that, of course. I have lots of exciting ideas, although we'll see what I can implement in the fact of the internet craziness of India.

In any case I am recovering for a succession of early-and-late days, including trying scuba diving for the first time and seeing some ancient ruins today. I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone blog. But, as a certain president once said, let it be known that

CHANGE IS COMING

Taking a Breather in Nelson

2009-04-29T12:14:00.002-03:00

When you're a long-distance marathon traveler putting weekly/monthly notches on your belt and watching a succession of stranger's bedrooms slip by, any modicum of familiarity is welcome. Especially welcome are the comforts of family friends, an almost-home away from home.

Nearly 2 months after I'd left the US, I arrived in Nelson and heaved a sigh of relief. I'd been there once before with my family to see the G's, long-time friends. We'd done lots of sightseeing and marveled over the town's laid back nature. And now that I was back, the pressure was off. I didn't have any plans or feel I had to see anything and everything. I could borrow a bike to tool around town and peek into bookstores and bakeries, sleep late, read on the shady back deck facing the Mai Tai river, and plan my text move.

And so, for the next week, that's exactly what I did. I visited with the various members of the G family, in town from the US and other parts of New Zealand; went to the remnants of the Busker's Festival (which I'd first seen in Christchurch) when they came through one evening; explored the city. One day I walked down the river to swim at the swimming hole with 15 adolescent boys who dared each other to jump off higher and higher trees into the cool water. Another day I biked all over the flower-lined town, to art galleries, a little museum, and a highly recommended coffee shop painted bright colors. I discovered a calligraphy school run by a British man and his Japanese wife, who was from the same town in Japan that I would later visit with JJ. I marveled at the WOW fashion/classic car museum, which featured fantastical outfits and gorgeous cars. And, as a special treat to myself, I splurged on a day trip to Abel Tasman park, where I tried sea kayaking for the first time and loved it.

Nelson, lined with flowers

The Mai Tai swimming hole

The Nelson Japanese calligraphy school

From the WOW Classic Car and Wearable Fashion Museum-- some of my favorites:

I want this car one day

Did somebody say "Bingo"?

This is a flapper dress made entirely of cotton swabs! (Look closely!)
Abel Tasman

The morning rain made it seem like it would be a disappointing day, but in the end the weather cleared.

And we saw seals...

Peeked into hidden, eroded coves in the coast...

And kayak sailed back into port.

On the day before my departure I got up early and visited the Nelson Sunday market, a fantastic specimin featuring everything from homespun wool sweaters to artisan cheese to woven baskets to pet rocks. An hour browsing the merchandise, chatting with the salespeople, and having fresh coffee and crepes for breakfast, got me prepared to leave the comfortably relaxing weigh station that Nelson had been for me and ready to make the leap to the next stop-- all the way to the north island and my last weeks in New Zealand.

The perils of Chinese internet

2009-04-27T03:29:00.002-03:00

Boy, it has been a really, really long time since I've had internet access in any significant way. And today the trend continues! However, I am heading to Hanoi, Vietnam on a night plane tonight (along with my intrepid parents!) and we will have a computer wired to the internet in our room. So: fingers crossed! If all goes well there should be a lot of photo-rich entries coming your way.

Sweet tweet

2009-04-17T02:58:00.005-03:00

Yes, I'll admit it. I have indeed jumped on the bandwagon (or fallen off it, depending on your feelings) and joined Twitter. What began as a personal do-whatever-write-whatever account has transformed into an almost-live short-version of this blog. I know that entries here can be few and far between (although I'm certainly working on that and hoping I can change for the better), so if you're hankering for more you can always head over to http://twitter.com/alissalee and keep track of me hour-by-hour. Wondering what country I'm in now (by the way, the answer is: China, near the Tibetan border)? Twitter can tell you! And I'm going to start posting when there's a new blog entry up, so it should all work together fabulously.

Sealed with a Kiss: 36 hours in Kaikoura

2009-04-15T07:14:00.002-03:00

In the march of "active vacation destinations," there are those that set Gold Standard-- offering cheap and plentiful activities-- and then there are that group's lesser brethren, either offering only a smattering of cheap adventures or an abundance of expensive ones. Kaikoura, two hours up the coast from Christchurch, fell into the last category. Almost everything to do in the town was way above my price range. So when, the morning after Waitangi Day, I hopped a bus 2 hours up the (stunning) New Zealand coast to Kaikoura, I knew I couldn't spend very much time there. I had already decided that I would only take advantage of one of the panoply of exciting opportunities available, from kayaking trips to dolphin swimming to whale watching, and I knew that if I stayed longer than a night or two I would be tempted to keep spending.

View from the bus en route to Kaikoura

If the above activity roster didn't give it away, Kaikoura is famous for its marine life-- I had the tectonic complexities spelled out for me a couple of times, but suffice it to say that the way the mountains plunge directly into the sea creates an incredibly rich and diverse ecosystem. Out of all the expensive ways to experience this diversity I had chosen seal swimming. Although it has been something of a dream of mine to swim with dolphins, I figured there would be many other places and opportunities for this dream to come true. Swimming with seals, on the other hand, struck me as less common, especially outside New Zealand. So to Kaikoura I came, ready to shell out for a magical experience and maybe bumble over another adventure in the meantime.

I arrived at my hostel mid-morning and just had time to cram down a "Salisbury steak sandwich" (i.e. new Zealand hamburger) at a flea market happening nearby before heading for the seals. At the company's headquarters in little downtown Kaikoura, we were provided with wet suits and snorkels and advised on basic seal behavior, a briefing that basically boiled down to: don't challenge their territory, don't touch unless they touch you, don't get between a mother and her pup.

At the swim point we were motored out about 1000 meters from shore to a large rock where a colony of seals lived. The deep green water was still a little choppy from the morning's wind but calming by the second. This was where it occurred to me that I should have bought an underwater camera in Australia and used in on the Great Barrier Reef and then here. But alas, it was not to be.

Unfortunately this is the best seal shot I can offer you. After this I jumped into the water...

The bay was so cold it left me gasping for breath in my wet suit. After the bathwater temperatures of Australian Ocean, I wasn't expecting such cold water. But after a few minutes my body adjusted and I started to admire my surroundings. We were swimming above a thick forest of kelp, a view almost exactly like an IMAX movie I saw once, the fronds swaying languidly in the current. Although they were nothing but playful and curious, being at such close proximity to so many seals was scary at first. I remembered the guide saying that seals are extremely adept in the water, and I couldn't help but think how un-adept I was in comparison. And all the time the waves were constantly pushing me toward the large rock, which we had been warned not to approach to closely in order not to infringe on the bull seals' territory.

After awhile I was able to maintain a constant position against most of the waves, and that's when I realized that the seals swimming around, under, across me were just curious, just playing. Several of them seemed to like to shoot at incredible speed through the kelp several feet below me, breaking rapidly to change directions and nose to the surface. Another watched me upside down from not far away, hanging in the water with it's tail just breaking the surface. And then there was a family around me, a bull and a mother and a pup, and they were surrounding me on all sides swimming and twisting, their big liquid eyes searching me out. The pup put its tail in its mouth and started propelling itself around in circles in a little ball, bubbles fizzing to the surface, looking at me as if to say "Can you do that?" Of course I couldn't, and it wasn't until I almost opened my mouth to say so that I realized, with shear joy, that they weren't just playing. They were playing WITH me. I swam in a circle; the pup swam in a circle. I did a somersault, the pup dove backwards, and then with a splash they were gone.

The entire experience was exhilarating.

After showering and changing clothes at my hostel, I spent the night wandering the little main street, which mostly featured overpriced meals angled at tour groups. I looked into a few stores full of tacky souvenirs, then went into a"trash fashion" show in an art gallery, featuring clothing made from found/recycled items. My favorite:

A dress made out of a waiter's apron and menus
I finally found a reasonable fish and chips joint (which is where I drank the Lemon & Paeroa featured in the last entry) and had taken my food outside to eat in the waning light when I heard singing. The sounds were foreign but slightly familiar, and at length I was able to identify where I had heard it before--the day before at the Waitangi celebration.

Night had fallen and I was cold, so I bought a cup of tea at the restaurant next door and settled in to enjoy a kapahaka or traditional Maori song/dance performance, this one also celebrating Waitangi Day. There were something like 10 or 15 performers, mostly female, swaying their hips and arms and singing strong and plain melodies interwoven with surprisingly sweet harmony. At one point they pulled out their poi, pairs of soft balls attached by string and swung in intricate patterns that those of you familiar with fire twirling practices will recognize.

From one of the tacky souvenir shops: the exoticized Maori, sold to promote tourism and make money

Real Maori, practicing their own traditions in their own ways

The night was only getting colder, so I moved farther inside the open cafe and ended up sharing a table with Tiffany, an exchange student from Georgia Tech. We shared our admiration and curiousity about the performance. Tiffany was not as shy or self conscious as I was, and before long she was at the head table asking the performers all sorts of questions about Maori culture. Some part of me, the part that is a trained anthropologist, was embarassed, feeling that she was crossing some sort of invisible line. But in the end we were sitting at that table with the leader of the kapahaka and her parents, talking about America and New Zealand, Maori life and traditions, the things we had in common.

Tiffany and our two new Maori friends

The night wore on and we all got more comfortable with each other, chatting and laughing, the akwardness of before erased by time and cold beer. Instead, there was a wonderfully horrible Maori karaoke session with a singer from Christchurch performing over prerecorded tracks, there was dancing, and then somehow I found myself teaching a good 5 or 6 Maori to do the electric slide. Not a bad way to finish of my Kaikoura adventure-- the next morning I caught a bus to Blenheim, and then on to Nelson, for fear that if I stayed any longer either the whales or dolphins would have won me over to another day in the ocean.

The scenery heading out of town was just as good as coming in

Mint-as, bru!

2009-04-10T04:20:00.003-03:00

Out having dinner in Kaikoura one night (entry forthcoming), I decided to sample a local soft drink. "Lemon and Paeroa" (better known as L&P) is apparently the official sports drink of backyard cricket, a fact I discovered while reading the label. I not only did not know what backyard cricket was-- I also found I could barely muddle through the entire label text. And so I present to you The Best Example of Kiwi English, Possibly Ever:

"As the official sports drink of backyard cricket, we've got heaps of mint-as gears taking up space in the tool shed-- so instead of hiffing it out, we're dishing it out. We've got BYC packs with bats and balls... and chilly-wickets (that's our flash name for chilly bins with wickets painted on them.). But hang on, it gets even way minter! There's also three 'choice-as' BYC weekends away for you and whichever five friends suck up to you the most. So find the fancy code on this bottle, then bash out a text or enters on the intertron."

Say whaaaaat?

(More Kaikoura coming to you after these messages)

Are you going to Okains Bay?: Banks Peninsula, 2

2009-03-29T12:48:00.001-03:00

As my travels continue, I've been exploring my personal travel style, learning what I like and don't like, my preferred pace, how many museums versus parks versus restaurants I can handle before it all gets to be too much. Spontaneity is one ideal I've maintained-- I say "ideal" because often being spontaneous causes me a lot of stress and anxiety, but I try to persevere because it means being able to take advantage of the random opportunities that sometimes present themselves on the road.

I left off last entry at one of those opportunities, the chance to see a Maori-centric celebration of Waitangi Day at Okains Bay on Banks Peninsula. I had planned to return to Christchurch after one night until I heard of the celebration, and so I had to scramble to find accomodation. All of the hostels in town were booked up, but I finally lucked into a free room at a local SERVAS host's bed and breakfast. When I arrived at her house, up a steep hill outside of town, it was immediately clear to me that the lady, whose name was Val, was significantly batty-- not in a malevolent way, just enough to prattle on about the discovery of Atlantis, past life regression, and the coming golden age brought on by a Buddhist Jesus figure as we ate her delicious vegetarian curry for dinner.

That evening I walked down to town, watching the sunset and trying to figure out how to get to Okains Bay, about 20 minutes away by car, the next day. In the US, such a celebration would warrant shuttle busses, or at least taxis, but I could find evidence of neither. In fact, the single taxi driver in Akaroa told me that she had advertised for a shuttle service and had had no responses. She apologized, but if there weren't any more takers the trip would not be worth her while.

I was flummoxed. It seemed incredible to me that such a big-deal celebration happening nearby would merit no public transport, but as it stood I would have done better to go all the way back to Christchurch and then get a bus to Okains Bay the next day, rather than stay in the immediate area of the celebration. But now that I had committed to stay, I was determined to figure out a solution. I started asking around in the restaurants and shops in town, and most of them recommended hitchhiking. I decided I might try my hand at it for the first time as a last resort, but first I would ask to see if there was anyone in town who was already planning to attend and had a free seat in his/her car.

And so I did. Akaroa's single main street is about a mile long, lined with little stores, galleries, coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, and bars. And I went into every single one of them (well, the ones that were open past dinner time) and asked the waitstaff, the clerks, and sometimes the patrons if anyone was planning to go to Okains Bay. It was a difficult task: I'm not a big fan of talking to strangers, in general, and this required me to continually break the stranger barrier for two hours. But I was generally greeted with politeness and friendliness, although this was always followed by apologies. When I reached the town's main pub, I stooped to asking every single customer. Finally, a well-dressed man seated with a group looked me up and down. "I'm not planning to go to Okains Bay," he said, "but I'll run you over if you like. You don't need a ride back, do you?"

I said I didn't: ironically enough, my Christchurch host, Theresa, was planning to drive down to the celebration and had agreed to give me a ride back to the city.

"Great, my name is Robert," he said, and extended his hand. "Do you like a fast ride?"

The next morning, after I had said goodbye to Val, I saw what he had meant. Equipped with a coffee for myself and one as a gift for Robert, I climbed into his beautiful blue Porsche at 9 am on the dot. We took the winding roads from Akaroa to Okains Bay at at least twice the speed limit, and he explained that he had a beach house on the peninsula, that he had started a factory business with three friends and when they weren't sure if they'd do well they'd agreed to each buy a Porsche if they succeeded. He paused to throw the car into third gear. "Well, two of us bought them. The third fellow didn't because he's Fijian Indian, and if he drove it people would think he pinched it," he said. I opted not to respond to this comment, instead silently admiring the car, which was all curves and growls.

View from the road to Okain's Bay
Out of breath from the speed, we arrived in Okains Bay, I thanked Robert and hoofed it down the road to the town's marae (remember, that's the Maori word for meetinghouse), the center of the day's festivities.

The beautiful blue Porsche. See what some determination and two hours of asking everyone in sight for a ride can get you?
At the marae, things were just getting underway.

The Okains Bay Waitangi Day schedule
The day started off with a powhiri, or formal welcome ceremony, in which a Maori representative challenges the visitors to prove their intentions before they are allowed on the marae. That day the powhiri was purely for ritual's sake, as there were no tensions to be resolved, but the sight of the chosen warrior stomping his feet, bugging his eyes, and sticking his tongue out angrily was still affecting. I looked around the crowd, which was filled with both white and Maori faces, rapt at attention. And for the first time I saw a Maori woman with a moko, or traditional chin tattoo. According to what I've read, moko used to be used to indicate rank and identity. They disappeared for a long time but now are making a comeback.

Performing the powhiri

Maori woman with chin moko

Once the powhiri was completed, we settled in for a lengthy program of Maori language and English speeches, discussing the history of New Zealand (Waitangi Day commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, where virtually every important Maori chief agreed to become a subject of the Queen, creating modern New Zealand-- just what "becoming a subject of the queen" meant to both sides was where the problems started) and emphasizing the importance of understanding and peaceful coexistence between Pakeha (White European) and Maori. In between the speeches, a group of Maori girls performed traditional songs, an interestingly diverse group (note one red-haired singer in the group below) in one-shouldered dresses swinging their hips and arms to the beat.

Maori girls waiting to perform
Following the speeches, we got to watch a NZ citizenship ceremony, which I thought was a very cool and moving way to observe the holiday. As we looked on, families from Samoa, Fiji, and South Africa recited oaths and started new lives. Each family was also given a tree to plant near their new homes, representing the roots they could now put down.

The rest of the day presented an earthy, down-home version of Kiwi culture, akin to going to a small-town Independence Day celebration in the States. There were sheep-shearing demonstrations, blacksmithing, arts and crafts. And intermingled with that, in a comfortable, unforced sort of way, were Maori traditions. Okains Bay has a fantastic museum of Maori artifacts, and lunch was a hangi, a traditional Maori meal of root vegetables and meat baked underground.

Cooking a hangi for 500+ people in the ground

A hangi lunch: sweet potato, pumpkin, chicken, pork, bread, and carrots all cooked in underground oven. Mmm, delicious.
Through it all came the voice of the day's announcer, a sharp Kiwi accent flowing continually through a PA system thredded across the entire festival site. He commented on the weather and current events, told jokes, and occasionally recommended that we go see a certain event, his disembodied voice assuring us with a classic Kiwism that this or that was "well worth a look." The sound of his constant patter added a lovely texture to the already fascinating day.

The afternoon ended on a fitting note, with a waka (traditional Maori war canoe) making a trip up the river feeding into the bay. The canoe paddled in from the Bay, with the occupants singing traditional chants in time with their strokes-- but those occupants were both Maori and Pakeha volunteers, and the revelers who packed close to the bank to watch the canoe come in were mixed as well, watching traditions made, stories celebrated, and centures of struggle not resolved but certainly remembered.

Paddling the waka

Akaroa? I hardly know her (Banks Peninsula, 1)

2009-03-19T07:13:00.002-03:00

If you ever find yourself in Akaroa, New Zealand, kindly remember that its location is NOT "the Banks peninsula" but in fact only "Banks peninsula." That is, if you say "I am going to spend the weekend on the Banks peninsula" you will have spoken incorrectly, and probably the nearest Kiwi will point this out and laugh. The more times you make this mistake, the more said Kiwi will laugh. I suppose it's a bit like saying "I'm going to spend the weekend on the Cape Cod," but it took me awhile to catch on to the idea.

Anyway, Banks peninsula is a little knob of land sticking out of the otherwise smoothish coastline south of Christchurch. I first spotted it while dreamily playing around with Google maps on my lunch break at work last winter. It looks very odd on a map, a growth in New Zealand's side, and when I found out that it was actually an enormous submerged volcano (also called a "caldera") soaked in Maori history I was hooked.

Beautiful Banks Peninsula scenery

I rode the Akaroa Connection, a glorified shuttle bus, from Christchurch to Akaroa (shocking!), the biggest settlement on the peninsula (you can say "the" in this case, but not when you add "Banks" to the equation). Upon arrival, I found my way to Chez La Mer, a charming hostel/ repurposed Victorian house. The name is French because everything in Akaroa is as well. A little known historical fact: the French actually "discovered" New Zealand, stumbling upon it on an exploring jaunt focused on other south sea locations. Because they were on a separate mission they had to sail back to Europe to ask permission to claim the land for France and bring back settlers, but in the interim the British arrived and made accords with the local Maori-- something like two days before. That means only 50-odd hours separate a British versus a French New Zealand, which would make for quite a different world.

Anyway, the French sulked and took Akaroa as their consolation prize, the one French settlement in New Zealand. It's a charming one-street little town, stretching itself around Akaroa harbor, one of countless harbors on the peninsula (because it is a submerged volcano, there are both harbors inside the crater and around the outside where the mountain comes out of the ocean). There are a host of bars, coffee shops, a little cinema, a grocer, and lots of farmers in the mountains. All the signage in French, although that's about all the French culture that remains. Borrowing a bicycle from my hostel, I went exploring, enjoying a fudge shop, poking into art galleries, and looking into another cute local museum. The so-called "Giant's House," an art garden where everything was intricately mosaiced, called to me, but the entrance fee was too steep, and I passed it by.

Instead, I rode my bike to Onuku Marae. In Maori a "marae" is a ceremonial compound that includes a sacred space and a meeting house, often in the middle of a Maori community-- where there is a marae there are certainly Maori. Here I encountered my first instance of the famous Kiwi understatement. New Zealander's lack of apparent enthusiasm is famous among travelers in New Zealand. I'm not saying that they actually don't feel strongly about anything, only that they often don't show it. An attraction that is fabulous-out-of-this-world is termed "well worth a look" and an hour and a half bike ride up and down small mountains is a "forty-five minute ride with maybe two big hills." At least that's what the owner of Chez La Mer told me as I set off on my mission to Onuku. I wanted a chance to enjoy the scenery, and I had never seen a "real" marae (that is, one outside of a museum.) As I will have plenty of opportunity to discuss in the future, I prefer to encounter culture when it exists for itself, rather than a paying audience, and the chance to see Maori life outside of a tawdry amusement setting was really appealing.

The bike ride was beautiful but incredibly challenging. In the end I walked the bike almost as much as I rode it. I was rewarded, however, with a peaceful Maori settlement nestled among mountains, from which emanated the sounds of traditional singing-- practice for the upcoming Waitangi Day (New Zealand independence day) celebrations.

Onuku Marae

I rested and ate some celebratory fudge, looked into a tiny carved church, and pondered the problem at hand: how to get the bike back to Akaroa? I thought I might be able to make the trek back, but it would take hours and put me out of commission for the rest of the week. I had, as the saying goes, bitten off more than I could chew.

The church at Onuku

My saviors came in the form of three middle aged British ladies who were also visiting the marae but who, wisely, had come by car. They may have been gray haired, but at least one of them was in better shape than I, and when she heard my predicament she consulted with her friends and very generously offered to ride the bike back for me while I rode in the car with her companions. I was disappointed in myself for not being able to finish the job and felt a stab of regret as we crested the last hill back to Akaroa, but part of traveling is accepting your limits and I certainly had reached mine that day.

Sunset after my bike ride

The highlight of my time in Akaroa came the next morning, when I woke bright and early to go out with the Akaroa Rural Postal Run--I spent 5 hours driving all over the peninsula with the postman as he delivered mail, newspapers, and medicine for the elderly. It was a fantastic way to see the area, which is very rural, confusing, and difficult to access without a car and a working knowledge of local geography, culture, and history. And I got the tour all to myself, which was even better.

A glimpse of rural NZ life

As we drove, the postman would tell me little snatches about the people we were delivering to: this family had been farming for generations on the peninsula since they came from Scotland; this one's father built the church on the hill with his bare hands, working for 30 years; this man has Parkinson's, isn't it a shame; this one has lived alone here his whole life; this one is an odd American who is building a Buddhist temple. Through maybe twenty different bays, through fog and sunshine, on paved roads and roads that were little more than dirt paths, we visited everyone on the route and I got to see the backstage life of a quiet, beautiful place unfold with the daily farmer's circular.

At the midpoint, the postman laid out a "morning tea" of crackers, cheese, muffins, fresh fruit, and coffee, to eat at a picnic table overlooking a beautiful inlet where, he said, dolphins sometimes come to feed.

A pretty nice spot for tea
In the last village, where the postman himself lived, we paused at the local school, where the students came running up to the van and he gave each a piece of mail to deliver.

Running to meet the mail

View along the postal route
And in tiny Okain's Bay we watched preparations for the next day's Waitangi festivities. A waka (Maori war canoe) sat in a river shed waiting to be paddled. Nearby, people dug a hole to hold the hangi, or traditional feast. The Okain's Bay celebration would be the biggest in the south island, and as we drove back to Akaroa, I made up my mind that I would change my plans and make it there. I just didn't know how yet.

Okain's Bay General Store

Waka in a shed at Okain's Bay

[Note: It was suggested to me that as I endeavor to catch up with my current travels I might include my present location in my blog entries. So I'm inaugurating a new "current location" feature in this entry. And I am thrilled to tell you that my current location is: Osaka, Japan. I am very, very psyched to tell you all about it.]