Does anyone read (or write) blogs anymore?

Well now we're home. I managed to blog about the first five days of our month-long vacation, and now we're home. Is it too late to blog about it? It feels weird to blog about travel when you're not doing it anymore. I'm a little disappointed in myself for not keeping up, for not blithely tossing off witty or poignant little missives as we went, sharing sweet little glimpses of how big and wide and weird the world is out there to me. But also, it was a vacation after all, whaddya want from me?

We got home Friday night and have spent the whole weekend getting used to being home and in this time zone. A seven-hour time difference is no joke. The circadian rhythm does not just switch, no matter our location under the sun or our most determined intentions. I stayed awake on the plane, watching four movies, (a little movie called Linoleum is a charming little gem that had me crying big gloppy tears all over my Delta blanket and pillow) and then did all my unpacking that night, determined not to sleep until 10 pm Minnesota time.  Saturday morning I woke up early, like 4:30, redesigning our kitchen to make as efficient use of space as the people of Berlin and Paris do. I laid there doing that until 5:30, then gave in and got up. The first half of the day I was full of energy, thrilled to be home, making plans to reorganize everything in our lives to be more like Europe, more like vacation. We biked to the farmer's market, and stopped at the Lowertown bike shop to get me a better seat and lock because I'm going to bike every day everywhere and I'm going to eat nothing but vegetables until I lose all this patisserie and charcuterie weight.

And then I went to two different grocery stores on my bicycle with its new seat and its new lock but I couldn't find that damn friseè (also known as curly endive) Robert needed for the Melissa Clark recipe he wanted to make. Fucking United States, dominated by boring lettuces. That was the thought where all my energetic exuberance to be home turned. By the time I got home, I was mad at everything and everyone. And my joints all hurt. And I noticed my ankles were still swollen from the plane ride. Or are they just fat now? As I put my bike away in the garage below our apartment, I could hear Robert yelling at something. He does that sometimes, usually when he spills something. But this sounded extra bad.

Putting away groceries Robert told the story of how many asshole American motorists he encountered getting to Trader Joes and the co-op and back. I asked if that was what he was yelling about, and he didn't even remember yelling. And then we both stomped around the apartment being mad and frustrated about things and people and politics and this stupid country and being old and being tired. And then we grilled some vegetables on the barbecue (because we're taking a break from meat after all that meat, wow we ate so much meat on this vacation) but I burned the corn because I fell asleep on the couch outside while I was supposed to be watching it. And then we ate a beautiful meal outside on the deck on a beautiful day and I could literally barely hold my head up to eat and notice the sky.

I washed the dishes while Robert yelled at me from the other room "What are you doing? I said I'd wash those tomorrow!" I yelled back, "I'm just rinsing, and you can't get mad at me for washing the dishes!" And he yelled back, "I"m not mad!" We just kept yelling for a while like angry geese.

We tried to watch a movie to keep ourselves up until bedtime this timezone, but we both just kept falling asleep and waking up and saying, "No I'm awake!"

And then we slept like 12 hours. Which is what we did the second night we were in Germany. I guess it's just what you have to do. Sunday I liked the world again and all the people in it and this wonderful place we live, Minnesota, which if I squint just right, looks a little European, a little socialist. It's also green as hell here and the birds and bunnies now believe the backyard is theirs, which I'm not inclined to debate, as long as they let me visit. 

So now it's Monday morning and it's back to work with me. I didn't miss working, but I did miss all the people I work with and all the cool things we do, so I'm a little excited. A little nervous I'll get overwhelmed by all the tasks waiting for me. A little determined not to let that happen. 

Sorry, this travel blog didn't keep up with real time at all. I don't know if it's because I was more interested in staying present to the moment than writing or because my sharing energy got used up on social media. Now I'm wondering if I've got the energy or inclination to fill in all the details from the rest of the trip here. I'm not under the illusion anyone's reading or waiting anyway. Presumably anyone interested got more than enough of my sharing energy on social media. 

I really loved blogging from the five-month trip to Central America I took 15 years ago, and it seemed like a lot of people enjoyed reading it. What's changed? Our attention spans? Our habits? I still like the blog better than social media because it gives space for the awkward details outside the frame of the carefully chosen photograph. It's a chance to process the whole experience beyond the perfect little moments when I had a camera in hand. There are so many more perfect little moments than those, like yelling like angry geese then cuddling for 12 hours and feeling better. Maybe I'll come here a little more often and write about perfect little moments in everyday life too. I don't know. We'll see how it goes not getting overwhelmed with work.

OK, photos just for fun.

One of my favorite photos from vacation.
This was when we first got to the Louvre,
long before we were so annoyed by the crowds
we said, "I don't ever need to come back here again."

This was an awkward attempt to photograph
lightning bugs in our backyard last night.
They're just so pretty. You're going to have to take my word for that.

Final days in Hannover

 I'm going to have to move along a little faster if I ever hope for this blog to catch up to realtime! Today is Tuesday July 11th, and we are in our final week, just the two of us now, in Paris, but let me tell you more about Germany!

So, just to finish up about our time in Hannover, in the morning after our special concert, Martina has to go to work, but we get to spend a little more time with Rosalie before she has to go, including some lively games of fußball (yes, foosball, the game with all the soccer players on rods you control with handles). They are both quite good at it, so the game goes best when Robert and are each paired with one of them. The fußball table is down in the basement next to the music room. It appears to be where Hartmut keeps his diverse collection of treasures - concert posters like Patty Smith, a rock collection from when he worked as an assistant to a geologist, an old tube radio from 1949 that belonged to his parents and still works. After Rosalie leaves, we spend the day with Hartmut - he gets many many texts and phone calls wishing him a happy birthday. Many people love this man.

We went bicycling again - I can't begin to tell you the joy of bicycling around this beautiful town that has made bicycling as much a priority as driving or walking - through the enormous forest again, but this time also along the rail tracks, through a vast network of gardens called Schrebergärten or Kleingarten or, as a group, kleingartenkolonie. At first I thought this was a unique treasure of Hannover, but Hartmut explained that these are all over Germany, and sure enough, we'd see them later on our various train rides. 

They were introduced in the 1860s, named after a German physician, Moritz Schreber, and also known as gardens of the poor. They were meant to give poor people living in urban, dense communities a green space to grow food and get respite from the city. They became quite a necessity after each of the World Wars for growing food. And now, they are very popular among all ages as a place to get away, relax, and reconnect to nature. Some we saw were designed mostly to grow food, but many - more, I'd say - looked to me like a weekend getaway, with a structure one could sleep over in, flower gardens, comfortable furniture, little barbecues, hedges, bird feeders. Tiny oases just outside the city. A great use of land along rail lines, and apparently quite affordable and popular. I wonder if we could adopt these in places like Eastside St. Paul.

We also biked to a Tiergarten, which I kept thinking Hartmut and Robert were calling a deer garden because it was full of deer. But tier means animal, so tiergarten usually means zoo. The one in Hannover was founded in 1679 by Duke Johan Friedric as hunting grounds for deer, but the Duke died a year later on a trip to Italy and never got to hunt the deer. Anyway, the deer are still there (or rather, their descendants), and a bunch of boar (kept in their own pen) and lots of birds. We had a lovely long walk, and then bicycled back through town. 

Hartmut insisted on a stop at a little shop where he went inside and came out with a surprise for us, he had purchased these cute little ice cubes we'd admired in the Aperol Spritz drinks Martina repeatedly made for us. What a fabulous souvenir. There were plenty of things in town to comment upon, a very old church with surprisingly modern architecture attached (something I'd continue to notice all over Germany and France too), all the funny old cars and different names for cars I know.

The days we spent with Hartmut and Martina blur together a little, as our stay extended longer than expected while we waited for our luggage that kept not arriving despite many phone calls by Robert and Martina to the Hannover airport. Eventually, we just drove back to the airport, and while Hartmut and I enjoyed yet another delicious cafe and kuchel, Robert and Martina navigated an understaffed bureaucracy to find our suitcase languishing amongst many more undelivered suitcases, and despite being told we must wait for it to be delivered, they simply took it. Phew, reunited with the rest of our clothes at last, we enjoyed one more dinner and evening together - eating delicious leftovers, discussing politics, sociology, writing, and whether we can be optimistic about the future or not, and finally watching a YouTube video of an old British movie called "Dinner for One" that is apparently a tradition to watch in Germany (or maybe just among their family, I'm not sure), but it was hilarious.

In the morning, they took us to the train station and we all had a tearful goodbye with lots of hugs and waves. They stayed and smiled at us through the window until we left, waving as our train pulled away. It is clear that Robert will miss them deeply, as will I. What an amazing family. I wish we lived in the same town. As our train speeds up, taking us to Berlin, we are already fantasizing about persuading them to meet up for a vacation somewhere in the future.

This time in Hannover has been such a brilliant and beautiful introduction to Germany, a place I'd never imagined visiting, and obviously had very little understanding of. I'm so surprised to find myself a little in love with it already. Who would have thought?

The kleingartens:

Old car, never rusts, because it's made mostly of plastic

Modern car, different name

An old church with a modern extension

I forgot to mention this.
Every town has these memorials acknowledging the crimes of World War II.
This is not a memorial nor a monument. It is called a "mahnmal."
Translated, it means "a monument that serves as a reminder of
a tragic event and a warning that the event should not be allowed to occur again."

I know the French and the British and others
have the reputation for delicious baked treats,
but I have to tell you, the Germans have their own
delicious things too. Yummmmm. 

Hanging out in a biergarten - these are everywhere,
shaded by tall trees, filled with people enjoying beer,a snack, time together.
I think this was already the second time I had curry wurst,
something Robert told me about but I never imagined
I'd love so much as I did. More yummmmm.

They stayed and waved goodbye until the train pulled out of the station.

Spargel und Die Schlegls

I thought I'd keep this blog realtime and chronological, but I'm going to have to let go of that idea for sure. Today is Saturday July 8th, more than three weeks in, and we are in St. Malo, France, but I'm still writing about our first few days of this long trip when we were still in Hannover, Germany. The social media feed is closer to realtime, though usually a couple days behind too. It's nice to come here and share the longer thoughts, though, at the very least to supplement my memory for later.

Sunday after our trip to the castle - a phrase I haven't used much in life but I will end up using a lot on this trip - we enjoyed dinner with the whole family, joined by Hartmut and Martina's children, Rosalie and Elias, two young adults as charming, intelligent, and friendly as their parents. 

It was Hartmut's birthday and it was also Spargelzeit - white asparagus time - a very exciting harvest moment in Germany, so dinner centered around these enormous, velvety smooth white asparagus stalks, served with potatoes, cured ham, and a light hollandaise sauce. I was so excited to eat it I forgot to photograph it, but trust me, it's a sight to behold, and delicious. I loved hearing everyone gleefully say, "Spargel" again and again, as it sounds a little like shparrgle, or like someone trying to say "sparkle" while gargling champagne. Here's a link to all you might like to know about the German love of fat white asparagus.

After dinner, Hartmut, Rosalie, and Elias, snuck down to the basement to "prepare a surprise."

About half an hour later we were invited downstairs to discover Hartmut's music studio, outfitted with instruments, microphones, and swirling colored lights. To our great and happy surprise, they invited us to listen to a concert they had prepared for us. I had been told Hartmut was really into music, and I'd noticed musical instruments here and there all around the apartment, but I had no idea that he and his kids had formed a band. 

They were wonderful - truly, not just like, "Oh, how sweet," - they were REALLY GOOD. We enjoyed several cover songs, both American and German, old and new, plus one original song by Rosalie she's written for another band that she's in. Photos and video, for your enjoyment, below. You can see a super cool painting of the band behind them. They haven't played professionally enough to have bothered coming up with a band name, but they played a while back at an outdoor concert and were surprised to see in the promotional poster they had been named after their family name "Die Schlegls," which is a pretty cute name.

Here they are playing "Blackbird" by the Beatles
and Elias is holding up this nifty thing that makes the
sound of a bird singing, just like in the original song.

Hartmut seems as proud as a father
can be of his talented, thoughtful kids.

Rosalie is a wonderful vocalist with a
magical stage presence.

At Martina's request, Elias played an old love
ballad that Elias first played when he was 12.

After the concert, we sang happy birthday to Hartmut - who to my utter shock is apparently 68, this man who wore us out again and again with all of his enthusiasm and energy. We had a lovely dessert, yet again, miraculously lactose free, and mine was topped with my new favorite liqueur, a Dutch drink called Advocaat, made from egg, sugar and brandy. We somehow stayed up until 1:30 a.m. and finally crashed, happy, full, and tired.

Hannover Day 2 - evacuation and a castle

Second full day in Hannover, Sunday, we slept even later, 11:30 a.m., phew, jet lag, wow. The day before, after many calls, we have heard from the airport that they will deliver our checked back to Hartmut and Martina's place. Cool. That will be so cool if it works out. While we went on all of our excursions on Saturday, the neighbor kindly agreed to watch for any luggage deliveries. Today, Barbara, Hartmut's sister, also known as Bobsy, is here, and she has kindly agreed to stick around and watch for our luggage. Today is Hartmut's birthday. I'm not sure if Bobsy is here for the birthday or for an evacuation. They explain, unexploded ordnance from WWII is still found now and then (like a few times a year), and neighborhoods are evacuated while a special crew comes in, digs it up, attempts to remove the explosive part, and if they can't, to contain it in some way and explode it. Bobsy's neighborhood has been evacuated for just this reason. The bomb is just 200m (I think) from her house.

Everyone seems pretty chill about the giant bomb like, oh you know, that happens sometimes. Apparently, they find the ordinance by comparing records from the allies who did the bombing with their own records about where explosions did (and did not happen). What an interesting job that must be. We found out later they could not remove the explosive part safely, so they contain the whole thing in some kind of water containment system and blow it up there. Apparently the roofs of a couple homes were damaged, but otherwise, it was all just fine.

So anyway, while Bobsy hung out waiting for our big red suitcase, we went off on another excursion, this time to Marienburg Castle, built between 1858 and 1867 as a birthday present by King George V of Hanover to his wife, Marie of Saxe-Altenburg. It's a little unclear to me (and maybe others) who currently owns it now. It was for a long time owned by Ernst August, Prince of Hannover, who was married to Princess Carolyn of Monaco, but then maybe it passed to his son Ernst August, Hereditary Prince of Hannover, but then maybe he gave it to the state of Hannover because it needed so much money to repair it after decades of neglect by his father who is also known as the "pissing prince" (and a raging alcoholic) because he was caught urinating on the Turkish Pavilion at the Expo 2000, leading to a complaint from the Turkish embassy accusing him of insulting the Turkish people. Apparently the son has sold as much art and furniture as possible in hopes of raising funds to repair the place, but then all those funds had to be spent on his father's debts. Ah, royalty. There are more twists and turns to the story, but maybe you get the idea. Our most scandalous American celebrities can barely keep up with European royal descendants. 

Anyway, the castle is lovely, with still many interesting furnishings, architecture, and great views. We had lots of fun roaming around it. Sorry I didn't get more good photos. I was just enjoying it. And I also neglected to get a photo of Bobsy who stayed home watching for our luggage. 

Next up, a post birthday dinner surprise from Hartmut and his children ...

Hannover Day 1 - Part 3

Oh! I'm going too slowly, aren't I? In realtime, it's June 27th, day 13 of this trip and here I am still telling you about day three of the trip, which was day one in Hannover. I'll have to speed up if I'm ever going to catch up to the much faster Instagram posts (and I'm even behind on those)!

Well, day one of Hannover is taking three parts because we did so much that day. Hartmut, our guide, is maybe one of the most energetic people I've ever met. He's a teacher, like Robert, but also he's a musician, and an avid collector and reader of history, and before becoming a teacher, he had about a hundred different odd jobs so he just knows lots and lots of random things he likes to share. I regret not getting a photo of him just being excited about something because I think that must be his natural state all the time. Robert told me, "He's curious about everything, like you." He really likes to talk about music. The morning of this long day - or maybe it was another morning, I can't remember now - he excitedly introduced me to a Swedish band called Junip that's been around since the late 80s by playing some of their music. I talked about the density of the music but because of Hartmut's accent, I heard "dancety" but maybe that's what he meant, though I doubt it because his English is impeccable, but anyway I liked the sound of dancety and it's wonderful to listen to him talk about music. He has a digital radio show he produces now and then full of history and insight into music around various themes.

So anyway, we're still on our first full day in Hannover, and our first in Germany, after two days of travel, jetlagged, missing our main piece of luggage, flabbergasted and thrilled to find ourselves here but a bit groggy and on yet another adventure after dinner. Off to the Herrenhäuser Gärten, an immense Baroque garden and palace dating back to the 17th century. We were there mostly to appreciate this great garden designed by Sophie von der Pfalz, also known as Sophie of Hannover, also through some political turn of events the unexpected heir and now sole progenitor to the crown of England. Most of that last part doesn't make much sense to me, but anyway she designed a hell of a garden, apparently in the Dutch baroque style, influenced by her childhood in the Netherlands. 

Hedges and fountains and statuary, oh my. It's just stunning. Hartmut made sure to take us to a statue of her where he explained she died in her garden, stumbling in a rainstorm late at night. We were there at night ourselves, a little later than expected, so moving quickly, because dinner conversation made us lose track of time - a pattern that repeated throughout our entire visit - anyway, we were there to enjoy that once in a while they turn on all sorts of lights throughout the garden, behind statues, in fountains, in various colors, bringing the already beautiful garden to a state of enchantment.

In the U.S., despite how much space we have, we don't have many spaces where we devote vast swaths of land to public art and thoughtfully designed places of contemplation and rest. We have our national and state forests of course. And we have monuments and memorials and government buildings and public art. We even have botanical gardens. But the sheer spaciousness of these carefully designed and forever maintained spaces of cultivated gardens, statues, and public spaces, celebrating ideas and beauty and history are so different from what I'm used to. Maybe it's unique to places that had royalty, but anyway, it makes my eyes wide and my breath deep and my sense of wonder expanded to stand there imagining hundreds of years of other humans calmly, joyfully wondering and smiling as they walk arm in arm, gaze at a statue, peeking around a hedge, listen to birds high in the trees, smell a rose, and cool off alongside a fountain. I love our American places of rest and contemplation too, but the walkways are just so much wider here, it's really luxurious. (Just a moment to say the Europeans didn't invent enormous luxurious gardens, the Chinese and the Egyptians did it too. I'm just saying we don't have them in the U.S. and now that they exist in public spaces available to more than royalty, well, they're nice.)

So anyway, we skipped along to Baroque music piped in through speakers I couldn't see, gasping again and again at every turn of a hedge to reveal a beautifully lit statue or secret sitting place. Photos below with captions to explain. Before we left the house, Hartmut enlisted my help toting along little bottles of sparkling wine in my purse, and the peak of the evening was when we arrived at the largest fountain of all, he fished out cups from his pockets, and we all slurped wine in the dark and marveled at 72 meters of water shot into the sky, lit from below. What a treat, I wonder if Sophie could possibly have imagined how many people would enjoy her work so long after she left. Thanks Sophie! Thanks dear Hartmut and Martina for sharing!

Fountains!

Fountains!

and more fountains!

Vastness!

There's a "grotto," originally built for the royals to cool themselves from the garden. Then it was a shop for a while. Most recently it's been completely filled with the art of Niki de Saint Phalle, most known and beloved for her "Nanas," curvy exuberant lady statues that appear all over the world.

An outdoor performance stage, the wings made by statuary and topiary. It seats 500.

The grandest fountain of all.
To sit here and sip sparkling wine with friends
while music plays all around, what a lovely night!

Hannover Day 1 - Part 2

And then we went on a bicycle ride though a forest and around a lake. Neither the forest nor the lake were small. I was so excited to be bicycling through such a beautiful forest I neglected to take a single photo of the forest, the lake, or us bicycling. I'm sorry, I failed at the photography part of this adventure, but I really was just so overjoyed and stunned it didn't even occur to me to take out my phone. 

First of all, I was riding an eBike for the first time. Wow, this might be life-changing. I've just read that Minnesota just passed a transit bill that will give a rebate on eBikes next year, I'll have to research when I get home, I want one! Here, the infrastructure for bicycles is everywhere! It seems to have precedence over every other form of transit. They have their own ribbon of a lane anywhere else anyone is moving. They have their own traffic lights. They have their own high-speed lanes for fast-moving bicycles. Everyone of every possible age, carrying any amount of day-to-day things is on them. I'm in love with all of the bicycling. I feel so boastful about how many bike lanes we have in Minnesota, but compared to here, we are like a dirt road to a highway.

Second of all, the forest (Stadtwald Eilenriede) is the biggest so-called "City Forest" in Europe, twice the size of New York's Central Park at 1600 acres with 50 miles of walking and 24 miles of bicycling paths. And truly a forest, with tall tall old trees, dense brush, so so green. Every once in a while a little surprise field or picnic area or bridge or stream or soccer field or biergarten or zoo, and then more forest. Hartmut kept up a fast pace and it was a joy to fly along, enjoying the cool breeze, birdsong, and sights along the way.

Thirdly, the lake. Also in the city, not far from the forest, the Maschsee is an artificial lake, about 200 acres in size, with every kind of water craft you might imagine except no motors, and lots and lots of people walking and jogging and biking around. Several lovely pavilions. lots of places to eat. Building it was an employment program of the Nazis. It's still a nice lake. 

We enjoyed some kind of flatbread thing that looked a bit like a pizza but was nothing like a pizza. In Robert's effort to indicate to the chef that I needed something lactose free but his own preference was "normal" somehow they started talking about being normal vs. being a foreigner, the chef being from Persia he said, and the next thing you know, they were hugging enormously. I'm still not sure how that happened, but it was just one of those traveler kind of moments of great friendly joy when two outsiders see the outsider in each other. By this time, I'd learned my first (and as Hartmut said, most important) German word, lecker, which means delicious, and which I proclaimed again and again as I ate my flatbread and slurped a delicious German beer.

I finally remembered to take a photo. This was before the flatbread arrived.
The fries come with ketchup and mayonnaise. Also delicious.

Along the way to the lake, we stopped at Aegidienkirche,
a church destroyed in the war - no roof, only walls - a monument.
This is a peace bell donated by Hannover's sister city,
Hiroshima, to remember the victims of war.

Hannover Day 1 - Part 1

Breakfast

We slept late. Something like 10 or 11 hours. Woke up still groggy. Hartmut and Martina have patiently waited to have breakfast. Breakfast is bread, rolls, cheese, meats. Coffee. I'm lactose intolerant. At home I never get to eat cheese. I eat Vegan cheese these days and try to pretend it tastes like cheese. It doesn't really taste like cheese. I miss cheese so much. More than I miss ice cream or sour cream or really any other dairy thing. Also, at home I spoil myself with a cappuccino every morning in which I use oat milk because it foams - one particular kind of oat milk, the only kind that foams. I've been bracing myself for this month to be spent in Germany and France, places where dairy is used a lot, and where I've been fearful they might not have any substitutes for full dairy everything. I've been imagining trying to explain why I can't eat anything. 

To my delighted surprise Robert has warned them and Martina has found laktosefrei everything! Laktosefrei 3.8% milk which they foam to a thick froth in their enormous foamer. Laktosefrei cream cheese with herbs de provence. Laktosefrei gouda. Laktosefrei ham salad. Breakfast is the three of them catching up in German, with lots of translation by Hartmut and Robert for me, which I barely hear because I'm quietly squealing the word "laktosefrei" over and over again. As I rub my belly and survey bread crumbs everywhere, I think no amount of walking will keep me from getting fat on this trip as I am reunited with my long lost love, cheese.

Old world

After breakfast we drive to Celle, a town dating back to the Middle Ages, and the site of hundreds of intact half-timbered houses lining cobble stoned streets. While Martina drives, Hartmut asks me how does all this German language sound to my ear. I pause. I want to be honest. A little sing-songy I say, more musical than I expected. But I add maybe that's because there is that up-lilting at the end that happens when one is talking to a foreigner, the implied "Do you understand" question mark. I say also, though, it sounds like chewing on broken glass. I impersonate what that might sound like. They laugh. I want to be more honest. I tell them I didn't grow up hearing German. It's not so common in Southern California. I want to be more honest. My mother was Jewish. Her mother was Polish. Her uncle - my great uncle - was a Holocaust survivor. Others did not survive. I grew up with only one association for the German language.

I've talked about this with Robert. I understand there is more to associate with Germany. But it looms large for me. Germany never topped the list of places I dreamed of visiting. If not for Robert - who speaks the language, who has lived there, who taught German in high school for many years and brought students on month-long visits - I would probably never have come.

Everyone in the car is nodding. They seem to understand. Hartmut begins to speak slowly and thoughtfully about what it is like to have lived his entire life in a country that is reckoning with the most shameful possible past. About his parents' stories. About his own efforts to understand and face this legacy. About memorials and reminders in every city, alongside every church, about Stolperstein (stumbling stones), about genetic memory. About vows to never start a war from this soil again. His voice shakes and his face is quickly covered in tears. I can't do justice to all of his words. Except to say that I am inspired to think that the U.S. could use some reckoning of its own.

Robert, Martina, Hartmut posed in front of the fountain in the Französischer Garten on the walk into the old part of Celle. It is a "French Garden" that has been reshaped a few times and looks a bit more like an English garden now. You can't really see in this photo, but there is a sculpture to the right of the fountain that looks like a swimmer floating in an inner tube.  

And then we pose too

Look, so old, 1534!

Nestled among the old, something modern

Finally caught a photo of the postal delivery by bicycle.
So much bicycling here in Germany, everywhere. More on that later.

Robert among the cobble stone streets.

Arrival in Germany

 Friday, 16-June, 2023

Later Gram

Hello, I'm writing this a week later looking back because the days have been so full of sight-seeing and visiting and eating and talking and pointing and smiling and nodding and trying to pronounce German words, and then each night collapsing into bed exhausted to write much at all. But I scrawl a few notes in my journal, take a lot of photos to remind me where we've been, and so, I try, to keep a record, because my memory is fleeting. It feels a little like age has changed travel for me. At 55, the exhaustion at the end of the day is much deeper, and in the morning, the memories of the day before a little hazier. 

Just getting here

Look, you know you're not over the States
because the farmland isn't square anymore.

So, to continue the transit saga, we flew first to New York, then from New York to Paris, then Paris to Hannover. It was cheaper and/or easier to use Robert's miles this way - I haven't been terribly attentive to the details, only grateful he had the hindsight a couple years ago to start using a Delta card for everything. I was skeptical at the time: "An annual fee! I'm not paying a fee to use a credit card!" But then he got all our tickets for hardly anything at all. Ah, I see.

Alas, the flight from JFK to CDG was delayed by a mechanical problem, turning a 5 hour layover into an 8 hour one, and making us guaranteed to miss the flight from Paris to Hannover. Damn. We had the whole layover in JFK for Robert to book an alternate flight to Hannover, which cost a fortune, though not more than we would have spent w/o those nifty miles anyway. It was basically two days of travel, and I was so groggy I left my beloved new Kobo eReader (loaded up with books I now can't imagine when I would have had time to read) in the pocket of the seat ahead of me on the flight to Paris. And our one checked back got separated from us, so we were left to hope the luggage would show up in Hannover eventually. Luckily, Robert suggested we each take a carry-on with enough to survive a weekend should the checked bag get lost ... Oh, I see. I've already spent a lot of this trip saying, Oh I see.

Old friends

Martina and Hartmut (more and better photos in my next post!)

Robert met Hartmut at Kalamazoo College in Michigan a long long time ago, and they've remained friends ever since. They haven't seen each other in 16 years, and Robert has told me how excited he is to finally see him again about a hundred times in the last couple months. Hartmut and his wife, Martina, picked us up at the airport with many hugs and tremendous joy. They are both teachers, like Robert, though Hartmut is now retired, and Martina intends to retire next year. They both teach at a school for the blind. Hartmut's English is astoundingly good. Martina's is more limited though way better than I'd expect for someone who apologizes and says she doesn't really speak English. Lucky for me they all are willing to do a lot of translating.

To be honest I don't remember much, except that they hugged us a lot and smiled a lot, and our luggage didn't make it, but a stern lady took our report that we'd like to know when it did arrive, thanks. And then H&M drove us to their lovely house, fed us, and we crashed into sleep like a train hitting a wall. I remember saying "I think I've never been so tired as I am right now." And then we slept about 12 hours.

Adventures in Hannover next ...

Departure

 Departure
15-June, 2023

I'm so pleased this blog still lives out here all on its own with no tending. I'm reviving it because it’s handy for travel. I can post pictures and stories without getting sucked into social media which seems like a vast waste of time once one has flown all over the planet to get away from the usual shit. I’m on a plane. This is my first trip to Europe in almost 25 years. 

Other people prioritize visiting distant countries much more than I have so far. I’ve favored roadtrips so much I’ve visited every state in the country, many of them several times. I like roadtrips because they require much less planning, and I don’t worry that I’ll offend anyone with my ignorance of language and custom, or that I’ll get lost or hospitalized. Maybe you think it’s weird I included “hospitalized” in the list of things I worry about, but the number of times that’s happened when I’ve left the country or continent is a little exceptional. (See my Jan 29, 2007 post for reference.)

I also favor inner trips - changing what I’m thinking about by changing how my mind works for a while. One of my best trips was to Joshua Tree for a silent 10 day meditation course. After the course, I rented a convertible at the Palm Springs airport and drove it to Pahrump, Nevada to see my Great Aunt Betty not long after my Great Uncle Rod - my #1 favorite relative - had died. The drive through dramatic desert landscape, blissed out on 10 days of alpha waves and altered states was otherworldly in nearly every way I can think of that matters to me. Upon arrival in Pahrump, lunch at a casino buffet while my Aunt Betty chain-smoked Eve Lights and told me about my uncle’s death was an almost equally surreal shift in perspective. 

I loved it. I haven’t prioritized any kind of travel as much since switching careers from being a software engineer to being a theater artists. I switched careers to be happier. I love my life. I don’t need to leave to be surprised, or find joy and fulfillment. 

So why go at all? I could say that Robert is really, super, duper excited to go. 

Look, he's even smiling sitting here at JFK
while he talks to Air France about how our
suddenly delayed flight to Charles de Gaulle
means we have to switch our flight from
there to Hannover.

He has prioritized travel in his life. His teaching job wipes him out hard enough to need a vacation, and conveniently comes with summers off. But I’m not going just for his sake. I’m going because once I leave, I always love travel too. Vacation bends time, but travel bends space, like the zoom function in a GPS app. 

I remind myself often - almost daily - that the world is big and I am small. I do it when I’m overwhelmed by perfectionism and when I am infuriated by Minnesotan drivers. I do it to keep my ego and entitlement in check. It’s a coping mechanism though, not a real experience.

To travel, especially to a place where everything works differently, where people care about entirely different things, where everyone moves about differently, where different plants grow from the cracks of different infrastructure with entirely different history is to remember how much variation there is out there from what feels fixed and forever where I live. 

To fly in an airplane, to watch the horizon tilt, to get above clouds and weather systems, is to truly see and feel in the center of my little human gyroscope just how big this planet is. I always try to get the window seat and I spend a lot of the flight craning to see out, my temple pressed hard against the dirty glass like a dog on a car ride. 

I’m embarrassed how my world shrinks to something the size of a suitcase as I prepare to go on a trip like this. I obsess over what I”ll need, try to anticipate every possible unplanned circumstance including lost luggage, illness, injury, plane crash, terrorist act, war, and apocalyptic disaster. Simultaneously, I try to pack as little as humanly possible, irrationally equating compactness with righteous nobility and wisdom. I pace my apartment at least a hundred times, packing and unpacking things, asking myself alternately “What will I need if it all goes to hell?” and “Would the Dalai Lama pack that?”

Once the luggage is stowed, and the plane lifts off, I always laugh at myself as I realize all I need is my passport, wallet, phone, and good shoes. On this flight, the first leg of three from Minneapolis to NY to Paris to Hanover, I also grab my partner’s hand and realize I need him too. 

And then I look around at my fellow passengers and imagine myself stuck on an island with all of them after the plane crashes (I’ve been finally watching Lost, 15 years after everyone else), and I try to imagine caring about all of them. I notice they’re all plugged into music, TV, their favorite digital escapes, doing their own world shrinking and expanding. I decide that a lot of them probably got weird and anxious while they were packing for their trip too. 

Humans are funny and I love them. I’m looking forward to meeting a bunch of them whose daily world is very different than mine. Fewer guns, more cobblestones. Whee, here we go!

Resuscitating the old into something new

OK, this post is going to be the short, summary version because I've already put so much damn time into explaining why I'm resuscitating the blog (as if that was necessary, was that necessary?)

In general, life is pretty good right now. I’m getting to do work I deeply love, that is extremely challenging, with people who inspire me like crazy. I’m pretty comfortable in terms of economic stability, home, health, relationships, spirituality, and general physical well-being. I have some really great friends who I don’t see often enough (hey, call me!) I’m in love with a romantic partner. I’ve got an old house with an endless list of possible projects it wants me to do.

I let my sourdough starter go dormant. Ages ago. But I've trucked the poor dormant lump of dough around to many fridges, through many housing situations, the last couple years. Finally, on new year's eve, I pulled it out, poured off the weird liquid on top, and mixed a lump in with some fresh new flour and water. Now it's sitting there on the counter, hopefully waking back up, into something new. 


The last two years involved losing some big things, including a marriage, a lot of illusions, and the lid that was sitting tightly on top of a deep deep and untapped well of grief and vulnerability. It also involved gaining some things – insight, deeper capacity, firsthand empathy around fragile mental health, patience, humility, good friends.


So I’ve got some stuff to share I think. I’ll try to come back here more often. Maybe I’ll see you here. I think there’s this nifty old-school “subscribe” function if you want to stay in touch with this weird experiment I’m trying. Or you could invite me out for coffee or a walk, you know, like we used to do, by calling or emailing.

Happy new year!

where did August go?

Wow, just noticed my last blog entry was about a moth. Exciting. And now all of August has flown by. And I've been a rehearsal room at the G since the Fringe. Assistant Directing doesn't involve much besides sitting next to the director waiting for a command. Lucky the G's rehearsal rooms have a view. So now I can follow my post about a moth with posts about geese. Interesting exercise in meditation, this sitting and just watching thing. I don't think I'll be signing up to AD again soon.