As you probably know, but may have forgotten, Kay and I are no strangers to long road trips. Our last in the U.S. was in 2012 in a motorhome that we nicknamed The Beast. That experience taught us a lesson; we won’t do it that way again. This time we are traveling in a brand new Grand Caravan by Dodge, so loaded with features that we don’t even have to open the two side doors or the hatchback manually. Just give them a nudge and they open automatically. For us old-timers, technology has changed our world in unrecognizable ways, hasn’t it?
Category: General
Innocents Abroad in Japan, Part 3
“Wearing kimono and walking in Kyoto”
Sign for a kimono rental service
From the window of a speeding Shinkansen on a sunny day, the impressions pile up quickly. There nearly always seem to be mountains in the distance. In the foreground, every bit of land seems precious. All the arable fields are under cultivation, and in settlements, the two-and-three-storey residential buildings are grouped so close together that it seems it would be difficult to drive a car among them. As for passenger cars in Japan, many are smaller and boxier that the larger, aerodynamic styling we associate with the Toyotas and Nissans in North America.
Discoveries in Uzbekistan
It is after 7 a.m. in Tashkent where I had arrived with others only four hours before in the middle of the night. I go into the hotel’s currency exchange office and lay a hundred-dollar bill on the counter. The woman in charge goes to a cabinet in the rear of the room and returns with a brick-size bundle of local currency. There are eight packets of one thousand Uzbek som notes, one hundred notes to a packet. With eight thousand som to the dollar, I now have eight hundred thousand som, which, other than for a few major purchases, will see me through the next eight days. “Salem Alaykom.” Welcome to Uzbekistan!
Gdansk and Around
Kay and I passed through Gdansk for the first time about ten years ago on our way north through the Baltic States in an attempt to beat the summer heat further south. On that occasion, we stayed only a couple days to admire the old city and ogle the amber jewelry in the shop windows.
This visit was more comprehensive. During scheduled excursions from our annual two-week literary conference held at a nearby resort on the Baltic Sea, we revisited the beautiful old town’s center, overflowing with summer tourists, and spent some choice hours in two museums that hadn’t existed at the time of our first visit.
The Austere Beauty of Iceland
March, 2015
Geologically speaking, nature did a good thing for the planet fifteen million years ago by giving us the volcanic island of Iceland. Of course, it took humans a long time to discover it. It wasn’t until the 9th century CE that a fugitive from Norway named Ingólfur Arnarson approached the island by boat. Throwing two carved logs overboard, he declared that wherever the gods decreed they would touch land he would settle. That spot became known as Reykjavik (Smokey Bay) due to the steam rising from its fissures and thermal pools. Today, it is that steam that heats the water that supplies the bathroom shower and fills the kitchen sink. Its faint odor of sulfur betrays its source.
Tassie
This Australian island was only a name to me prior to this trip. It might not even have been that if it weren’t for Errol Flynn. He was one of my boyhood screen heroes, and I knew he came from a place called Tasmania.
Getting Mellow in Melbourne
The city of Melbourne on Australia’s South Coast with a population of 4,200,000 is nearly as large as Sydney, yet we experienced it quite differently. Partly, this was due to the influence of our German friends, Conny and Jocki, who have a long relationship with the city and who enjoy a relaxed style of life. They introduced us to Melbourne in a gentle fashion, first when we disembarked from the QM2 for a day and then again when we arrived for this longer visit after Sydney. It was fortunate that their current visit to Melbourne coincided with ours.
Pleasures of a German Spring – 2012
“ . . . everything was thrilling because nothing was the same . . . “
Tom Waits
There is a phenomenon common to us all known as psychological time. I mean that our perception of time passing is a function of what we are experiencing. That time passes more quickly when we are having fun and more slowly when we are bored or watching the clock is a truism. The longest fifteen minutes of my day occurs when I’m running on the treadmill at the gym.
Studies show that when we step out of our daily routines and do new and different things our hours and days seem to lengthen and that they pass more quickly when our routine activities resume. At home, although I may be doing many things in the course of my day, they tend to be the same things, and the days, weeks, and even months seem to pass very rapidly, too rapidly for someone as conscious of finite time as I’ve become. I have the opposite reaction when I travel. At those times, days seem to pass much more slowly; a week on the road can seem a month long because I’m seeing different sights, hearing different speech, and thinking different thoughts.
A Roman Holiday 2010
Even with Kay’s arm in a cast it was a pleasure for us to be in the Eternal City four days last month and to find it every bit as beautiful and exciting as it was the last time we were there in 2002. Certainly, our pleasure was enhanced by being able to share it with our nieces, Amy and Sarah, the daughters of my late brother Chris and his wife Linda.
Maltese Moments
November, 2009
The best thing about the British Hotel, the oldest in Valletta, is its location half way up the cliff that is the southern edge of the city. Our funky room, the only one located on the top floor of the hotel, wasn’t very large or comfortable. In addition, when leaving the room in the morning, we had to step gingerly around the piles of soiled sheets and towels the maids were sorting in front of our door. However, at the cocktail hour, we would take our plastic cups of scotch onto the large, adjacent terrace and enjoy a sunset view over the Grand Harbor that was second to none. We treated the terrace as our own private domain as no other guests ever seemed to come up there.