Almost Home

Hello, hello. I am finally back in civilized land. There was really no chance for internet use once we left Stockholm. The woman who runs the farm where we stayed has a computer which we probably could have used, if it was urgent, but all I wanted was to check my email and see if anyone wrote to me on Facebook. Not urgent, unfortunately. And then yesterday, we stayed at a weird hotel near the airport in Stockholm, but their "business center" consisted of two computers which you had to stand up at the reception desk to use, and the internet was down besides. I was not happy about that. It really was a weird hotel. I felt like I had landed on a space station somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It was all glass and steel and odd round hallways. It was not homey at all. And there were round portholes in the bathrooms, which looked out into the main room. I guess this was to allow natural light in the bathroom, but it also made me feel like I was having a shower in a submarine.

We are staying in Frankfurt tonight, preparatory to leaving for Portland in the morning. (Yay!) I am ready to go home. More than ready, in fact. I have had many interesting adventures and have enjoyed my trip for the most part, but I have grown weary of digging through a suitcase for my shampoo, and of worrying that I will run out of clean clothes before we can do some laundry again.

I know, I'm a whiner. Here I am in Europe, seeing the great cathedrals and castles, and partaking of delicious cuisine, and all I want right now is to go home and sit on my couch in clean pajamas with a cat in my lap and watch a movie in English.

Except maybe no cat in my lap, since I hear it's been 105 degrees in Portland this week! Ugh.

I will get back to our Swedish adventures once I'm home, since it's costing me €4.50 for 45 minutes of internet time here, but here is a short anecdote to tide you over: when we landed in Frankfurt today, we immediately got the shuttle to our hotel (sort of--we waited and waited and waited for the shuttle outside the airport, and when it came we got seats, but a group of about 8 with suitcases did not fit into the small van and they were mad). It was already after 2 when we arrived and took our heavy bags up to our hotel rooms for the last time, so we decided to have lunch here at the hotel and then go to town to explore a little. I expected that the restaurant would be deserted, maybe even closed, but when we walked in there were several tables of people chattering away, and the food--oh, the food!

There was a table of desserts right inside the door, strawberry cakes and chocolate mousse and cherry sauce and blueberry cake and apple cake and chocolate pastries. There was a table of fruit and cheeses. There was a table of green salad, with sliced cucumber and mushrooms and olives and mozzarella balls and other things to choose from. There were two kinds of soup, and a whole spread of salmon and white fish. There were pastas and beef tips in wine sauce and brussel sprouts and broccoli au gratin. There was a carving station with mediterranean stuffed turkey. There was even a crepe bar.

I couldn't believe it.

So we sat down, and the waiter told us the price per person, and that it included sparkling wine and juice and water. And that's when it occurred to my dad that it was Sunday. This was Sunday brunch that we had stumbled upon. I didn't even know what day it was, but it certainly explained why groups of dressed-up Germans were eating a plentiful feast at 2 in the afternoon.

It was delicious. We stuffed ourselves (some more than others), having had a very bad dinner last night at our Stockholm airport hotel. (Seriously--it was awful. I had a shrimp sandwich that turned out to be fishy-tasting salad shrimp, partially congealed hard-boiled eggs, enough mayonnaise to coat the outside of the Vatican, and a small piece of cold bread. It was disgusting. I had to go to the supermarket afterward and buy a bag of nuts, the only thing I found that sounded good and didn't require cooking. And that was after they told us the damn internet wasn't working until Monday!)

And for lunch yesterday, we had eaten at McDonalds while traveling back to Stockholm. Yes, I know. But as I told my parents, it's kind of interesting to see what different things are offered, or what is not offered, at McDonalds in another country. Basically, the Swedish one was a lot like the American one. Not as different as China, where they serve taro pies in addition to apple, and pork nuggets. Anyway, it was fine for one meal but I was hungry and disappointed last night after all that.

Hmm, this has been a food-heavy missive, but you can see what's been on my mind.

Tomorrow, all things going in our favor, we fly home to Portland! I am so ready to be home. I am hoping to recover quickly from jet lag, because I start my NEW JOB on Thursday. Yay.

I will write more about Sweden as soon as the jet-lag wears off at home.

Out into the wilds of Sweden

Greetings from a gray and drizzly day in Sweden. It reminds me of home, in a good way.

In the morning, we will leave Stockholm, a safe and fairly friendly city where most people speak English very well (I hate to be an Ugly American, but it's so nice not to have to resort to hand signs, gestures, drawing pictures, and using the few words of whatever language I know to get directions or order food--is that so wrong?--but in my defense, I always try to ask if someone speaks in English in their own language, or at least say excuse me in their language before I launch into English). We are leaving for...well, I am not exactly sure where.

We are going tomorrow morning to pick up our rental car from the Stockholm airport, the first time we will have our own transportation on this trip. This is both good and bad: potentially less walking with our luggage, especially for my mother, and we are not at the mercy of bus times or unscrupulous taxi drivers. But it also means we have to navigate streets, learn parking (and no parking) signs, and find our own way in the world. We also have to pay for our own gas, which I understand is perhaps the equivalent of $15 a gallon. Feel better about paying $4.50 at home now?

Today we saw the Vasa, a ship that sank 380 years ago on this very day in Stockholm Harbor: August 10, 1628. It was a coincidence that this was the anniversary of the sinking, and no one at the museum even mentioned it, but my mother noticed the date of the sinking. It was even a Sunday. I told her that if this were a young adult book, we would have been transported back to Stockholm in 1628. She said not to even think that! (By the way, if you're reading this and steal my idea, I will find out and demand royalties.)

The ship was pretty interesting. It is HUGE and impressive-looking, made of black oak and massive ropes. Sadly, it only sailed for 20 minutes on its maiden voyage before it tipped to one side, righted itself, and then sank right in the middle of the harbor. The king had given everyone the day off to watch his prize vessel sail, so there were hundreds, if not thousands, of witnesses.

A team of divers was able to raise it from the harbor in 1961, but it spent over 300 years buried in silt below the water. Consequently, it was very well-preserved. They even recovered many human remains, some of which were used to reconstruct what several of the passengers and crew may have looked like. It was eerie to see the model heads in the museum; it really brought the events to life, so to speak.

Tonight we had Mongolian barbecue for dinner. Yes, you read that right. We went to a restaurant near our hotel, and recommended by our concierge, which had a genuine Chinese buffet and Mongolian barbecue (where you fill a bowl with raw meats and vegetables and noodles, and a chef cooks it for you on an iron stove). It was delicious. We all inhaled our vegetables, and then we had fruit and ice cream for dessert. It is the first buffet I have been to in Europe, except for the spread at our hotel breakfast every morning. That is good, too. I had cornflakes this morning, with dried apricots and prunes and hazelnuts; and Swedish meatballs, and grapes, and sweet bread with cardamom, and orange juice, and a cookie. Yesterday I had all that, and some cheese.

We are not exactly starving in Sweden.

This is our last night in the land of free hotel internet, so I may not write again for a few days. I don't really know what to expect when we are away from the city. Tomorrow we will tour the home of Carl Larssen, a famous Swedish artist and designer (who once painted a picture of his daughter that looks exactly like I did when I was ten, braids and all). And then we are going to a farm near where my father's side of the family lived, in the hope of doing some ancestral research and perhaps locating some long-lost cousins.

Write to me!

The last nine miles

There comes a point in traveling when you just don't want to do it anymore. You don't want to rifle through a bulging suitcase to find your socks. You don't want to do battle with yet another inscrutable hotel shower. You don't want to keep moving every few days to a new place. You don't want to learn thank you and where is the bathroom and check, please! in yet another language. You don't want to drag your bags through any more airports, or train stations, or strange foreign streets.

For me, that day was today.

They say that marathon runners hit a wall sometime before the end of the race. In Run, Fatboy, Run, which was one of the four movies I watched on the plane from Portland to Frankfurt (only two weeks ago, but it feels like several years), this is portrayed as a physical brick wall a thousand feet high blocking the entire road, which, if Simon Pegg's character can break through it, he might just finish the race.

That's how it felt today. Here we are in another city which I really wanted to see, but I was too tired and too tired to enjoy it. I discovered this morning that the head of my razor had cracked in my bag, and I cut my leg with it in the shower. A few days ago, the hairbrush I have had for nearly twenty years simply snapped in half while I was brushing my hair one morning. I have been using the stump with the bristles ever since, but it's not quite the same. (Yes, I am pretty sure they sell hairbrushes in Europe, so I could get a new one, but I have never found a replacement that I liked as well as this brush.) In Italy, I sat back on a park bench and got gum stuck to the back of my shirt, which I then got on the strap of my bag and everywhere else.

Which is how, with all of us tired and weary from traveling, wanting to make the most of our time but also not anxious to leave our hotel rooms, I came to be weeping on the street outside our hotel in Stockholm in broad daylight this morning.

Don't worry, I'm fine now. That's the thing about a good cry: I feel so much better. And we had a pretty good day, with a boat tour of the harbor and some shopping for Swedish glass, followed by dinner in the hotel. I have always wanted to have dinner in the restaurant of a nice hotel where I was staying, but I never have until today. It was raining too hard to go out, and Stockholm itself is expensive enough that the hotel's meal prices were very reasonable. It felt very decadent to eat salmon and new potatoes, drink white wine, and finish off with a chocolate petit four.

And now I am going up to my room to watch a little TV and read my book before bed. On today's boat tour, we learned that Sweden's national television service never dubs movies or television shows, but broadcasts them in their original language with Swedish subtitles. Hurrah for the Swedes!

I hope all of you are well. Send me an email or a comment when you have time!

An international day

I am in Sweden! This morning I was in Germany, and tonight we had dinner at an Irish pub (I had grilled Irish sausage, french fries, and hard cider--oh, and chocolate cake with berries and whipped cream). It's been a little of everything today.

Our hotel in Stockholm is beautiful. The lobby has dark brown stone floors and interesting red Scandinavian chairs--very spare and clean, but surprisingly comfortable--and my hotel room looks like an Ikea ad, in a good way. Everything is white, from the bedding to the walls, except that I have one turquoise wall with an orange and white square on it, and an orange lamp, and a turquoise cushion on a gray chair. It sounds a little bright, but really it feels very peaceful and calm.

I sat for a while after we arrived and watched a movie. Apparently the Swedes prefer subtitles to dubbing, or at least on the channels we get here, because the American movie was in English for once! I learned how to say "thank you" in Swedish from the subtitles (tach), and also some interesting profanity, although I don't know how to pronounce all of it.

Germany was nice, but we only had two complete days in Heidelberg, and we managed to fit in a tour of the Old Town, a couple of churches, the university library, the students' prison, a castle for dinner and an operetta (The Student Prince, which is American but set in Heidelberg--the songs were all in English but the dialogue was in German, so our friends had to help translate); and then a three-hour boat trip, lunch on the river, a tour of the large manor house in the next town with beautiful gardens, and a very nice dinner.

Needless to say, we are all completely exhausted. I have reached the point in traveling where I am ready to go home. Not that I don't want to see Sweden, of course, but I grow weary of having to make several trips to my suitcase for things I forgot for my shower, and wearing clothes that have been rolled and sealed into plastic bags for transit.

We did a great quantity of laundry in Heidelberg, in a combination washer/dryer that is a great mystery to me but managed to get everything clean. Between the three of us, I think we did about six loads over two days. Our hostess was very gracious about it, though, and even managed to get some stains out and hung things to dry. She was wonderful.

Tomorrow we will go explore Stockholm. There is a very old ship to see in a museum, and an open-air folk museum displaying ways of life from different parts of Sweden, and many other things to choose from. I am also interested in eating at a Chinese restaurant. We have seen them in every country so far, and I am curious about Chinese food in other countries.

Today I watched part of the Olympics opening ceremonies on television. It made me a little homesick for China, since every holiday and festival and any occasion is marked by pageantry of the sort they put on for the Olympics, although this was on a much, much grander scale. Lots of swirling skirts and ceremonial swords and dancing and singing, all topped off by enough fireworks to cancel the clean-air initiative entirely.

I think I forgot to write before that I met some Chinese men in Rome. We stopped at a sidewalk stand where my sister had metal card stands made for someone--they're wire with the person's name and decorations twisted into them. Hard to describe, but I have pictures. Anyhow, next to that was a man painting scrolls with elaborately decorated names on them. I decided to have one made. I wrote my name down for the man, and he turned it into a multicolored festival of colors and flowers and animals. It's really beautiful. But partway through his drawing, I realized that he did not look Italian. So I asked him, in Chinese, if he was a Chinese person. He looked up in shock. Yes! Chinese! he said, and rattled off with an accent I couldn't quite follow. I explained in very basic Chinese that I was an English teacher at a university. We both smiled at each other, knowing that this was a special moment despite the language barrier. When we left, I thanked him in Chinese and then used an informal way of saying goodbye. The man from the wire stand next door looked over in surprise and repeated it. We all laughed, and I waved as we walked away. I felt very international.

There is a very comfortable-looking feather bed calling my name. We have free internet at this hotel, although they're down to one computer while the business center is being remodeled, so I should be able to write again from Stockholm. I don't know what will be available once we head into the hills with our car. Oh, and our taxi today was a Volvo station wagon! Ah, Sweden.

Another travel day approaches

Short post tonight. It has been bloody hot in Venice, although I have enjoyed my time here. Tomorrow we leave for Heidelberg, Germany, where we will stay with a friend of my father's from many years ago in the Air Force. He and his wife (who is German) are taking us in. We are all looking forward to doing some laundry and possibly eating a meal at home instead of a restaurant.

Not that I should complain, I know....

Our hotel in Venice has air conditioning, but they are using the term loosely. I have had the AC on full-blast the whole time I've been here, but my room continues to be sweltering. Unfortunately, I cannot open the windows at night because there are mosquitoes the size of rhinoceroses that will eat me alive. (I know this from the last time my sister and I were here, in a hotel with no air conditioning, and we left the windows open the first night. The next day we looked like we had chicken pox, or bubonic plague.)

We have been eating very well. I have pretty much gotten enough of gelati, pizza, pasta, wine, and the other delicious things Rome has to offer. At least for this trip.

Almost, that is. After this, my mom and I are going to buy one last gelato, and take it over to the steps of a church where there is a Vivaldi concert going on inside. I was kind of thinking I'd like to go to the concert, but I'm guessing it is very, very hot inside the church! We're better off on the steps like everyone else.

Today we stumbled on an exhibit of musical instruments at a small (relatively--it would still hold a couple hundred people if they were friendly) church. The door was open, Vivaldi music pouring onto the street, and there was a sign saying Free. So we walked in, and there was a display of violin-making materials, and many old instruments, including an Amati bass from the late 1600s. I saw several violas (yay), and two viola d'amores, which are like a viola but have a great many more strings. As a string musician, this was the highlight of my day! Imagine, we had already passed this church twice, and never known the interesting treasures within. But that's what Venice is like.

I will end now, since Mom is finished with her computer and ready for gelato. Take care, everyone, and I'll talk to you soon. I'm not sure whether our hosts have email in Germany (probably--but I'm more interested in whether they have a washing machine since I am out of clean clothes!!), and I don't know what the situation will be like in Sweden. So goodbye for now.

Learn Italian the Tourista Way

The thing about train travel is, it seems terribly romantic and exciting unless you are actually doing it. Every time I see a scene in a movie with a character taking a train trip, she is sitting in a quiet compartment that rocks gently, trunk safely stowed above, gazing out the window at green fields, usually wearing a stylish hat and gloves. What you don't see is how she had to run through the train station with her suitcase, looking desperately for a ticket machine which then would not take her credit card, and hauling her heavy bag down the stairs and then up the stairs to the right platform--she hopes--before heaving her bag up the steps onto the train that finally arrives, and then seeks out an open seat that might or might not be reserved for someone else, and hoists her bag onto a luggage rack about 50 feet off the ground; and, praying that the train is going the right direction, she sits there sweating through her last clean shirt, too tired to look out the window at anything except station signs that might or might not be correct.

In fairness, I really do like traveling by train. I think the US was very shortsighted not to develop a national rail system (I know that is a popular opinion these days, now that gas prices are more expensive than running liquid gold through your car, or burning big piles of cash for fuel). And it is fun to look around and see what is going on.

There were rows of grapevines threading through vineyards that began to look like lines of leafy elephants, nose to tail, stretching their green trunks toward the train tracks. There were red and white church towers in every village, and medieval towers fortifying the hills. There were very local-looking people on bicycles, women's skirts mysteriously not flying up in their faces as they rode.

And we made it to Venice. Only just. Our train was late arriving in Bologna, where we changed to the Venetian train. I don't know why it was late, exactly, but there was a great deal of shouting in Italian at the ticket collector as we sat at one station (sweating, because the AC goes off when the train stops) for nearly 30 minutes. I tried to ask the man across the aisle about it, but he didn't speak enough English and I didn't speak enough Italian, and my Rick Steves phrasebook was way up in my suitcase. Oh, well. We caught a later train and got here only an hour later than we would have arrived, and the sun was lower in the sky so there was more shade for us.

It may be a cliche, but I love Venice. I know I have picked an obvious choice, but I think it's my favorite city. Ever. Even though it's so damn hot right now that I can't tell if I actually dried off after my shower this morning.

I love the little twisting Venetian alleys that seem to go nowhere (like the dark hole where we watched lines of tourists disappear, and others come out, for hours last night while we had dinner until 10:30--I still have no idea where they were going or why). I love the canals, with their vaguely decaying smell that wafts across the stone bridges and narrow streets. I love the big boats puttering along, and the small wooden crafts that zoom about, and the fact that you take a water-bus instead of a land bus.

And on that note, my father, who for the last week has been ordering water in English at restaurants, has finally learned an Italian word: vaporetto, water bus. He just used it casually last night, like he has been speaking Italian all along. "How late do the vaporettos run?", he asked me, and I almost dropped my camera in surprise. When it comes to boats, he is always interested.

So in the spirit of that, here are some helpful Italian words and phrases I have learned. For you Italian speakers out there, please forgive any errors I may have made:

Dove: Where (doh-vay). As in, "Where is the train station?" or "Where is a gelateria?" or "Where is the nearest fountain I can throw my crabby family into?".

Gelateria: Ice cream shop. Although that is a terribly inadequate description for the heavenly nectar that is gelato. I believe it's made with a very great deal of cream. There's a reason that people bring elastic-waist pants to Italy. My favorite flavors this trip have been cherry, lemon, and peach. It's just too hot for chocolate hazelnut, pistacchio, and my previous favorites.

Quanto costa: How much is it? As in, "Are you planning to drive me all over Rome in this taxi and then charge me 50 Euros more than normal?". Side note: I have unfortunately not learned my numbers beyond 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, so if it costs more than that, I'm in trouble.

Caldo: Hot. Which seems backwards, because it sounds like "cold". As in, "It's so hot that I have had four gallons of water in four hours and not needed a bathroom all day."

Troppo: Too (much). As in, "You are charging too much for these cheap tourist knockoffs," or "It's TOO HOT!" Even the Italians have been saying that last one, which is how we know we're not just wimps.

Basta: Stop. This is a confusing word for me, because it sounds a lot like "bastard" and I wondered why people were yelling that at each other so casually. But really, it's more like, "Stop here for the light," or "Stop, thief!".

Portare via: To go. As in, "I would like this pizza to go." (Really.) This was a personal triumph for me, as I learned and used this phrase on my own to get my breakfast to go, and then taught it to my sister, who studied in Italy for several months but had never heard it. We were able to get lunch to go at a train station and carry it back to our group on the platform while we waited for the next train. I'm sure we could have also gestured to make the woman understand, but it was nice to be able to use real words for once, instead of my usual pointing and thanking.


All right, class, you can put away your pencils. We'll pick up again soon.

Today we are going to Piazza del San Marco (St. Mark's Square), one of the most famous sites in Venice, and I hope we will tour the Doge's Palace, which was the site of the influential political dealings of Venice's most powerful days. My sister and I saw it in 2005, but my parents haven't been here before.

And just in case you're confused by the mention of my sister, she and her boyfriend are also traveling in Europe, and we met up with them for a couple of days to travel to the small town in Le Marche where she studied for a semester. We had the most delicious dinner with homemade pasta at her favorite restaurant, and she took us on a tour of her favorite pizza stand, gelateria, and her school. Now they are back in Rome and headed for Greece (so sad for them), and my parents and I went on to Venice.

Thanks to all of you who have written. I appreciate the emails and comments! Sorry I can't write to everyone individually right now. My offer of a postcard still stands, though, if you send me your address!