Return to Normalcy

I arrive at the airport late at night and am greeted by an old friend who has agreed to pick me up. The airport is almost empty and my arrival is not grandiose. Although I feel like it is monumental to be back home I am glad that there is no one there to congratulate me or celebrate my return. I can’t quite get a sense of the things I am feeling, or if I even still feel. I am trying hard to grab at any emotional change in order to put some kind of label on the experience of being back. I am not successful however so I remain in a null state. This state remains for weeks, maybe months, before I start to think maybe there is still a person, or part of a person, that I recognize banging around inside of me. I am still confused why everything is so melodramatic. I have traveled so much before and never come back feeling so strange, but this time is different, this time changed me I guess, a lot.

I have all the time in the world, but getting anything done feels like trying to run under water. I move back into my childhood room after several weeks of throwing stuff away. I go through my stuff from San Francisco, then through everything else but I just throw all it away. Then I go through all the excess things that my parents decided to store in my room while I was gone, which are still taking up the entire hallway. I paint over, throw away, re-upholster, and re-cover anything that remained from before. Nothing is the same. It can’t be the same.

My experiences and memories nag at my mind reminding me that I did actually do what I just thought I did. I start to realize this trip has become part of me, not just something that happened, but rather something that has seeped into my body like a sponge passing through water. I feel the water still dripping out of me as I am pulled out of the water, still heavy and full and in flux.

I start working pretty soon after my return, strangely in a job that I love. I work in a basement sewing for a start- up athletic apparel company. There are two of us. My boss is roughly my age and has a Masters in fine arts-sculpture and got his undergraduate in San Francisco. Needless to say we have a lot in common. I meet up with old friends, I visit my grandma, I sleep with my kitty. I meet up with Jessi and I am reminded of what a deep and amazing friendship we have. After following each other around the world for 7 months there is something unspoken and unbreakable present. It requires a fair amount of grit to not only endure the struggles of traveling third world (pardon the term) but also to endure your companion enduring the world. She was a joy and a support throughout the trip and she always managed to make me laugh. If it weren’t for her fierce ideals and tenacious aptitude to put them in motion this trip would have never happened nor been so successful. Thanks for everything Jessi!!

Things are starting to take motion, ever so slowly. I must re-build a life and I feel good starting a new phase. I’ll be taking the GRE sometime in 2012 and applying to math graduate programs for the following academic year 2013. Meanwhile I’ll just be working and trying to get back on my feet, taking advantage of the freedom I have to do art and fashion and anything else that runs across my path. I imagine I’ll be in Denver just as soon as my wallet allows it. So far there has been no shortage of good people and fun times so I’d say things are looking pretty good.

Cinque Terre, Italy

Our trip to the Cinque Terre is really best explained with pictures. It was extremely picture-esque. For us it was a fairly non-descript part of our travels. It is very touristy and a bit kitschy. Everything is set up for tourism and we just arrived from a train ride that went all along the French Riviera, so we were a little unimpressed with the vibe of the place but of course, it was still an enjoyable several days. There is a walking path that goes from each of the 5 cities along the rocky coast. The views and cities are beautiful. There is a train that goes from each of the cities as well, so each day we could pretty much go to whichever city we wanted to. We camped in a luxurious camping site outside of the five cities and took the train in about 10 mins each day to check out the Cinque Terre. The prices were high and we were pretty restrained by our budget, but the beach was nice and there were plenty of things to enjoy without money.

The Old Bastard and His Dear Wife: Niederlauken, Germany

The first stop in Germay was in the tiniest of tiny towns where I used to live with my parents when I was 18. Our landlords then, a couple in their 60’s, lived in the same “Hof” or courtyard as us. Not only were they extremely gracious and welcoming to us but they were great for us, newly in Germany, to get a sight into rural German culture.

The man, Helmut, was Czech and moved to Germany with his parents when he was very young, maybe 3 or 4, after the war. They were forced to move due to the war. I don’t fully understand this but I think they were kind of like refugees. He is a very dear man who is passionate about everything, and truth be told is actually a racist old bastard. But you will almost always find Helmut with a huge grin from ear to ear and often pared with a kiss received on both cheeks. He got limes disease when he was a boy from a tic and he struggles constantly with his health, but he is a brut with a barrel chest and an ego big enough to move a house with his bare hands. He works in the Hof every day-all day and has most of his life. He is a farmer more or less. He grew up working in the fields and he will die working in the fields and he is happy, genuinely happy.

His wife, Waldraut, yes that is her name, Waldraut. If you think that sounds like a bad name, you should hear it pronounced properly in German; it’s bad! My feelings of fondness for Waldraut run deep. She is dear. She is a giver. That is what makes her happy. She will give everything she has got for Helmut. She will simultaneously feel in debt to him. I think they are really in love. They are the kind of people that when one dies, the other will follow shortly thereafter from a broken heart. I don’t envy their relationship however. It is incredibly old fashioned and I think you have to grow up with certain hardships and unquestioned inequalities to be able to feel happy in the kind of relationship they have, but I have a lot of respect for them. I remember when I first lived there when I was 18, I would sometimes go out and help them pit buckets of plums from their trees. I was sitting on their steps in front of their house with Helmut and he was telling me the story of how he met Waldraut. He was telling me how they would go dancing together and how she was not pretty but she was sweet, oh she was sweet. Then Waldraut pops her head out of the window from her kitchen, which is directly above where we were sitting, and pitches in, “Oh no, not pretty. But sweet!” with this huge smile and cackle of a laugh following the comment. Oh if you could hear her make that laugh you would fall in love with her too.

These two provide entertainment constantly with their antics and dynamic. They own the whole Hof, which is where Waldraut grew up. Her father had built it before the war. They both grew up on the land and that is their life. They are not educated past what the rural school of the few town kids of that time required and don’t speak a lick of English. The place used to be set up for cows and a hay barn and the whole old German farm set up complete with the old German wood work buildings. It now has mostly rental units which they rent out but much of the farm set up and wood work remains. One of their renters is somewhat of a large, antisocial computer guy. He is a bit strange and kind of a downer, and Waldraut and Helmut love to dislike him. They call him The Fat One “Der Dicke”. During our dinner of sausage, with sausage, and bratwursts and cheese, Waldraut lurches her head toward the window, her perch, and spies The Fat One. She announces in excitement, here comes The Fat One, Ochh Yeah, here he comes. Then Helmut starts imitating a fat guy walking up the stairs by putting his hands in fists in front of him with his elbows bent as if he were imitating driving a car and then starts rocking his torso right to left with his fists going up and down in sync with his torso. He has a huge grin on his face because he is totally cracking himself up and he adds sound effects to the imitation, “Hemminy Hemminy Hemminy Ha” in a gruff voice. He and Waldraut then bust up laughing and Helmut does it again. Helmut has decided that this is a genius new thing and he would do it every time The Fat One comes home from work. He expected a laugh from Jessi and I every time he did it. We gave him one, and he didn’t seem to notice if it was slightly less full hearted each time.

They own the most land out of all of the 400 some inhabitants of this town and they feel very proud about it. They built up their life all on their own. Everything they have, they worked for. They have bees, apple trees, plum trees, potato fields, cabbage fields, squash, vegetables, various crop fields, ect. They make their own liqueur and apple juice and sell it. They harvest and can all their crops for the winter for their sustenance. Waldraut collects stuff, in an extreme way, and does flea markets on the weekends. I think she is one of those vendors that always seems to do a little bit better than everyone else, sells a little bit more. I don’t know what it is but she has a knack for people and for sales. She makes money doing it. She also has a change jar that every time she sees a coin on the ground or finds a bottle that can be returned for money, she collects it and puts the money in the jar. At the end of the year she will sometimes end up with 100 euros. On her way home she will stop at various random places that she has at some time in the past found abandoned bottles and checks to see if there are any more, just like a bear with food. She will collect them if she sees them walking in town or at the train station, or anywhere, her radar is always on. This is money, she says every time with enthusiasm and a knowing look on her face, as she holds up a bottle she has just found.

I love hearing her tell stories from her life. She is a very old fashioned person but can be strangely open minded at times. I was telling her how I am not very interested in getting married at the moment or maybe ever, which is often a shock for the older generation, but she doesn’t skip a beat. She starts telling me that if you don’t want a man then you don’t have to have one now days. She says times are different for women now; women can wear pants. She doesn’t mean control, she means as opposed to skirts. She then launches into this story about how she remembers the first time she saw pants for women in a catalog. They were bright teal and they were beautiful. She and her friend decide to order a pair for themselves. Once they arrive they put them on and decide to go out for a constitution to show them off by the church. The church was where everyone would hang out and socialize. It is still the only thing the town really has besides houses and a firehouse. They were the first women in the town to ever wear pants and she said they were young and they looked good. As they walked by the church there were cat calls and cheers and general approval. She said they used a word that is old fashioned and not used anymore but basically means, “that’s sick!” or “that’s Phat” or something to the effect. Now Waldraut’s dad, who she said was always very dear to her in contrast to her mother, who was very mean and awful, was in the crowd and piped up, “that’s my girl”. I did not understand the full meaning and implication of this comment from her dad, but Waldraut was very impressed by it and it was either a comment out of pride, or a comment that said, cut it out and give respect boys cause that’s my girl. Either way she told this story with charm and her eyes were light up as if she was right back in those pants for the first time in the town’s history. I love to imagine her wearing those teal pants walking by everyone, shocking them with modernity.

She has lots of stories about the war, when she was only 3 or 4. Apperantly there was a Hilter hide out just behind the town in the woods during WW2. I have seen this place on many occasions while going on walks or rides through the woods. It is incredibly creepy and still has the barb wire up and the guard dogs, because the place is still in use as a bullet factory, or something. So the Americans came to the tiny town of Niederlauken and were occupying it for a time. She said when they first arrived they got all of the inhabitants of the town and made them come out and line up in front of the church in front of a cannon and soldiers with guns. She said she was terrified and didn’t know what was going to happen next. They had also raided the houses for food, I guess, and she noticed that the soldiers were eating her mom’s canned food with their dishes and silverware, which she still has and which I ate my food off of during my visit. She said at one point they shot up the whole village and their house had holes in the roof and she remembers her dad saying, look you can see the stars through the ceiling. She said the house was rebuilt after that because the whole roof was shot out. She told me lots of stories about this time.

We spent about a week here with Waldruat and Helmut eating their good old fashioned German food and listening to their stories and laughing at their antics. The town Niederlauken is tucked away in the Taunus Mountains (actually just rolling hills) in Hessen about an hour north of Frankfurt. Their house is old and adorned with strange collections, like smurf figurines, old irons, tea and sugar containers, stamps, hunting gear and stuffed animals. Every square inch of the walls are covered. He is a jagger (hunter) and he also plays the horn, a traditional hunting type horn. He plays with a group of men every week and gets dressed up in German attire and a robin hood like hat and will play at festivals and stuff; very traditional and very proud. The room Jessi and I stayed in is drab and has all his hunting stuff in it and lots of stuffed creatures on the walls, just like the rest of the house. Our bed was covered with a huge fur hide which we slept warmly under every night, and when we got out of bed we stepped onto a fur rug, with the eyes and snout still on it.

Helmut and Waldraut were incredibly gracious and hospitable to us during our visit and were just pleased to have us as guests. One of the things that both Helmut and Waldraut excitedly offered to us separately was to look through the window. I thought this was hilarious. That was like a special pleasure for them. They love to look out the window and see what the neighbors are up to and what is going on. It’s their perch. And naturally that kind of pleasure you should offer to your guests. Anyway, we ate a lot of very German food, went on walks in the woods, relaxed a lot, checked out the country side, went to the a flea market with Waldraut, ate at my favorite restaurant, Zur Linde, and had my favorite dessert of Heiss und Ice (it is just ice cream with heated up raspberries served on the side that you pour over it, but it’s so perfect), we visited the town Marburg where I studied for a semester in college, and met up with one of my best friends from that time, but mostly during our stay we ate a lot of sausage. Yup, breakfast lunch and dinner. I just tried to avoid the blood sausage and liverwurst.

One Day Stopovers: Venice, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels

Due to the fact that we bought a Eurail Pass with a certain number of free travel days we scheduled in a few cities that we could just stop in to see for one day only, in transit to our actual destination, in order to make the most of our free travel days. The four cities that we got to see extra for this reason are Venice Italy, Berlin Germany, Vienna,Austria, and Brussels Belgium. It is a bit strange having only a few hours to see a city and I am normally inclined to say it would not be worth the hassle but actually I think these stop overs were well worth the effort. We did have Copenhagen on the list as well and ended up not being able to make it, sadly, but not every city is a good one to jump out of the train station and run back at the end of the day.

Brussels was probably the least exciting stop over and was just out of necessity for getting to Dublin the cheapest, but we had a good time anyway. I have been to Brussels before and it is nice but really really crowded and touristy, and actually kind of kitchy. So we decided to opt out of seeing the famous peeing boy statue and settled for just buying peeing boy tourist crap instead. The first thing on our agenda was to eat a ridiculously overloaded waffle. Strawberries, chocolate, whipped cream, and yes, ice cream. We paid an arm and a leg for that and I’d do it again. Then we bought ridiculous amounts of chocolate. Then we went into tourist shops and walked around to kill time and that was it. We headed for the airport and slept in the airport in order to take our obscenely early and cheap Ryan Air flight to Dublin. Have I mentioned how much I hate Ryan Air? Well I am bound by my wallet to them, but oh so resentfully. If you can, I recommend anything else, fyi.

Vienna was one of my favorite stop overs and one of the shortest sadly. This is one of the few cities on the Europe portion of our trip that I have not been to before so this was especially interesting for me. In addition to that, I love speaking German so I was pretty happy to be there. When we arrived we locked up our bags at the station and headed for a tourist info stand. We got the tourist map with all the tourist sights on it and as we started reading through it there were so many cool ones that we wanted to go to that we realized we were never going to have enough time. I was interested in coming to Vienna in the first place because one of my favorite artists, Egon Shiele and his buddy Gustav Klimt, were from Vienna and I wanted to see their work. So Jessi and I decided to split up and meet back at the station in only a few hours, before our train to Prague departed. Jessi went to the Freud Museum to check out her favorite psychologist. OK OK Jessi, I know he’s not your favorite psychologist, in fact hes crazy, right? But interesting none the less. I ran to the Leopold Museum which houses the larges Egon Shiele Collection in the world and literally was running through it. There was an amazing Art Nouveau Jewelry exhibit in a side gallery. Ran through that. Then I ran outside and into the Kunsthalle where there was a Dali exhibit and a contemporary art exhibit about the dream of space. Ran through both of those which were really cool and then ran back to the station. Jessi met me and we hopped on our train just at the last minute and fell asleep until Prague. Definitely going to have to go back there sometime.

Venice was a one day stop over twice actually. The first time we spent all day looking for the port and cheap cruises to Greece, which fell through and turned into a trip to Croatia instead. On the way back from Croatia we stopped here again and actually got to enjoy the city this time. We split up and I looked at art and Jessi chilled out and enjoyed the scenery. While I was walking around and popping into gallerys I asked one of the attendents if she could recommend some good places for art. She asked what kind of art I like. When I gave a vague response she said, well do you like renaissance art? No actually I don’t, I really dislike renaissance art and I prefer art after the 20th century. To which she responded, agast, well, you are in the wrong place. I laughed and went on my way without a recommendation. It turns out there is a lot of really great contemporary art in Venice. I just kept happening upon cool gallery after cool gallery. I have been to Venice before but it is a really great city to re-visit. Not only is it beautiful with a totally unique landscape but it seems there are so many nooks and crannies where you keep finding cool things to look at and explore. Walking around you constantly feel lost, like you can’t escape the maze of alleys so you keep going and keep going and then eventually you happen upon somewhere really amazing. In navigating back somehow there are always seemed to be a sign exactly where you needed it telling you exactly where you want to go. It’s great and amazing! It was a pleasure to be in Venice. I can imagine carnival there would be out of this world.

The last one day stop over was in Berlin and it has got to be one of my favorite cities. Again, I am fairly obsessed with German speaking cities already, but Berlin is particularly special. It has got a vibe to it. It is buzzing with a history that screams for freedom which is fiercely upheld in every creative way possible. There is graffiti everywhere speaking about politics, saying finally we have the right to dissent. The art scene is vibrant with people who grew up in a culture that understands what it would be like in a society without art. They are independent, modern, progressive, political, socially keen, and still attempting to bridge the many social gaps that still exist from a harsh history. Berlin is German but they are a trump for Germany. They are of a higher order. It’s more like Germany houses Berlin, as a guest.

Sadly the whole day we were there was a little bit miserable. Poor Jessi was recovering from a cold and still sick and it was rainy the whole day. We didn’t have an umbrella and we kept thinking it might let up but after we had our breakfast in the first good looking covered coffee shop we found we realized we were in a bit of trouble. We ended up finding this beat up looking umbrella laying on top of the trash can. When we opened it there was only one wire slightly bent so we decided that would do, for the both of us. Hahaha. Anyway, we stayed a bit dryer, I can say that for sure and I was very happy for that trash can umbrella. We went to some holocaust memorials and museums, art gallerys and art museums (well the gift shop anyway cause we were too poor that day for anything not free), Check Point Charlie (where the old east west boarder to the American sector was), and a Berlin Wall memorial. I paid, like a sucker, for an old East German passport stamp and visa, and I was pretty happy about it. I am awfully intrigued by the East German history and if you don’t know much about it I really recommend the German film “The Lives of Others” or “Leben des Andern”. It is a fabulous movie about the stasi secret police and the political feel of the times. It is easy to find and has English subtitles. Also must recomend "Good Bye Lennon" and "Liebe Mauer" (a bit cheesier than the others but still good).

Europe is so vast and so dense it is hard to not be ADD about it. It felt like we were on fast forward for the two months of our travels through Europe especially compared to our extended stays in the rest of the world. But we had a good time and, well, we got our money’s worth.