18.11.11

dreams of far-off lands

As long as I remember, I've been interested in Other Places. Some of my favorite books when I was younger involved foreign travel. My mom lived abroad as a child and young adult, and the house was full of the remnants of that life- books from Brazil and France, kitchen towels and trinkets from her family trips all over the world, and when I was sick and stuck in bed, she used to give me the postcard box to distract me from the long bedridden hours. It was a shoebox full of postcards that her parents and college roommate had sent from their stops all over Europe. I'd flip through them, lingering particularly over the ones of the little girls in national costumes, and try to insert myself into those turreted, cobblestone venues.

There was also that one time my father went on a trip to somewhere in Quebec and came back with all kinds of ordinary objects from there. Soda cans (in French! I was delighted), tickets, paper napkins, brochures. I wanted to be in one of those places where these other languages were really how people communicated, not just something I practiced in a classroom. Later I collected coins from anywhere I could- forgotten remnants from the dryer traps at my parents laundromat, gifts from friends and family who traveled.

The first time I went For Real abroad I was in college, on my way to an internship in London. I stopped over in Paris before my work began to visited my aunt who lived in the 16th, within walking distance of the Eiffel tower. I can still remember that sunny July day when I called my parents from a phone booth below the Palais de Chaillot. "I'm HERE I'm really HERE!!" The next two weeks I spent doing all the things one does in Paris- I ate loads of lemon tarts and meandered through the parks and went to Versailles and generally marveled at all the things I'd seen in all my dim art history classes, finally come to life in full three-dimensional beauty. What glee to know that the downspouts at the base of the central courtyard at the Louvre had dolphin-shaped openings, to know exactly how the summer light looked through the stained glass arcs of Ste Chappelle.

Six months later, I was back in Paris again, this time to study 19th century French literature. I was one of the hardcore kids in the class who wanted to only speak French all the time whenever wherever. After just four weeks I was almost able to walk into a shop and not plan out what I was going to say beforehand. I started thinking in French, and the French words for objects moved to the forefront of my mind, just in time for me to return to America.

I held onto that foreignness as long as I could, wearing the clothes I'd bought Over There, poring over my credit card bill when it arrived with all the names of the exotic places I'd used it while on my trip. I held onto the timezone as long as I could too, waking early to the fuchsia streaks of a New England winter dawn through the leaded glass windows of my dorm room. It was the early days of radio stations streaming online so I hunted for ones that would give me the flavour of being Continental, streaming them into my dorm room decorated with travel posters and any travel memorabilia I could scrape from my home. My miniscule dorm fridge was stocked with Pellegrino limonata from the Italian grocery store near school, and I thought it the height of cool to invite my friends for espresso. Yup, I was That Girl.

During those first years after college I didn't manage to travel so much, what with living in Boston on a meager entry-level salary, and having only two weeks vacation per year. I did finagle a trip to South Africa via England once, and I remember sitting on the wall at Windsor Castle in the light of Saturday morning, thinking how lucky I was to be sitting there while everyone back in Boston still slept. The rest of the trip was quite memorable for probably all the wrong reasons, but I came home still resolved to get out as often as possible.

When the chance to move to Iceland arose, I grabbed at it, not only due to the relationship but because I saw it as a way towards this life I'd been dreaming of for so long. This might not have been my dream country but it was different, foreign, with a crazy language and totally new customs and culture. In the years since then, I've never regretted the move, and the chances I've had to visit places I imagined so fiercely haven't disappointed. Even after almost seven years of life abroad I still get those moments of wild euphoria when I realize that I'm actually sitting in that fabled city, understanding an ordinary daily transaction in a new language, being part of some ritual that I'd read about once upon a time, or I'm there in front of some long-adored building or work of art.

I promised myself when I graduated from college that I wanted to be sure to never stop learning, and this life trajectory has certainly made learning a nearly daily necessity. There's always a new word to learn, a new obscure era in history to experience first-hand in a tiny village, and now an entirely new language to soak up. It's a bit daunting to think of how much there is to learn lying ahead, but I know that along the way there will always be those thrills that come when dreams become concrete.

9.11.11

time travel

Back from Germany and finding the re-entry to be rather bumpy. The visit to Germany was golden and sunny and autumn-leaf filled, but one of the high points was a visit to S's bachelor uncle H in a miniscule village in the rolling fields of Thuringia. This time S promised me I'd be able to explore the wonder of a house more than our last brief visit- it's a huge pile of stones, a home from another century, and has been lived in by the same family for most of its time.

We pulled through the always-open heavy wooden doors into the cobbled courtyard mid-day and passed through one of the barn gateways into the back garden, where the blood from a recent sheep slaughter still pooled in the earth. Off to one side, S's cousin was playing with her young son, a pink-cheeked, solemn young fellow. She told us that H was awaiting our visit eagerly and had even put on new trousers just for the occasion. So, back through the courtyard we went and through the wide farmhouse door to the flagstoned entry hall. This room alone is fascinating, with the massive staircase leading up and the myriad of doors going everywhichwhere, ornate of hinge and door handle. H came out, followed by his enthusiastic and massive Ridgeback, Nelson. We'd brought treats for Nelson and he found them immediately despite my attempts to hide behind my back. No matter.

We then all piled into H's farm scented land rover, and off to lunch we went. He'd chosen a place that was surrounded by a sort of petting zoo, occupied by deer from India, potbellied pigs, shetland ponies, and all manner of curious piebald geese. Inside the decor of the restaurant was equally inspired, with a Tiki bar hung about with cowboy boots and crowned by a stuffed peacock. The food was the best Germany can offer though, plentiful, delicious, and comforting. Afterwards, H took us on a tour of this slice of the land, showing us his winter wheat fields, sown and ready for the frosts to come. He showed us the wide view over the water that provided the area with the power that fueled the once-booming leather manufacturing. It's crumbled now, and as we went through the main town, it was quite evident- rambling, massive villas from the turn of the century are now crumbling into the ground in fascinating disarray. Some have been preserved and rise in fanciful shapes against the woody hills, but the place definitely had the feel of having passed its era of grandeur.

We visited the elementary school where both H and S went, a yellow confectionary from 1911, all wide windows and delicious turrets, set atop a hill and surround by lovely sloping lawns. After a final stop to view the glory of the 19th century train viaduct, we went back to the farmhouse for the moment I'd been anticipating since I first saw the farmhouse back in 2008- the attic visit. I knew that such a house must have an amazing attic, and S had told me stories of playing up there as a child, so I'd asked him if this visit could possibly include a trip up there. H happily agreed and soon we were up there among the massive beams and many layers of dust.

Of course there was an old rocking horse, and a large old dollhouse that would have housed a massive doll-family once upon a time, along with ancient farm scales and plenty of heavy old bits of furniture. H pressed through to the end-room where a row of windows trimmed with stained glass looked over the eaves of the outbuildings beyond. There, he went to a dusty cupboard, saying "here's where the real good stuff is". Inside, the shelves were crammed with papers, albums, and cigar boxes. He pulled the top one out, full of stiffly posed 19th century portraits, the baby ones with that fuzzy blur they always had when the baby-wriggle was faster than the shutter speed of the era. Beneath it was another, a postcard album from a little girl who'd lived at the farm around 1900. There were postcards of the sights around Europe at the time, greetings on the first day of school, Christmas cards, birthday cards, new-years cards, all as crisply colored and bright as if they'd been sent yesterday. Page upon page of German history stretching through the first world war, and a second album chronicling the years after.

I dug into the lower shelves, full of dress pattern catalogs from the 50s, farm logbooks from the 40s that tallied the bushels of rye, wheat, potatoes for every month. I found illustrated newspapers from the 1920s, cigarboxes full of all kinds of odds and ends. One contained needles and lengths of hemp for sewing sacks, another contained some forgotten buttons, a third contained a large chunk of rock and a rolled newspaper clipping. None of us could determine what had been so important about that particular bit of rock but to someone it must have been significant.

By then the sun was starting to fade and the attic was growing cold, so we went downstairs to join the others for coffee and cakes. Such cakes! There was plum cake and crumble cake and so many types of cookies, all eaten around a massive table and surrounded by furniture that was at least a hundred years old and probably hadn't moved from its location during most of that time. In one corner a lovely Art Nouveau grandfather clock kept us company, as the view of the little church across the street faded in the dusk. After coffee, S and I went downstairs to H's cozy living room where he lit the fire and Nelson curled up in his huge basket right in front of it. I finally had a chance to marvel at the wonders in this room, including a fascinating 19th century men's smoking table, covered in stamped tin and including matching covered ash tray. I then noticed the row of leather volumes on the bookshelf, so H explained his love for old maps and atlases. I pulled the first one off the shelf and was immediately lost in the 16th century maps of Europe inside. So many of the towns I've visited were already there, albeit with a different idea of their locations relative to each other.

When the fascination of the map book was exhausted, I turned to the next volume on the shelf, an illustrated history of Germany, published in the 1890s. It was certainly a thrilling tome and liberally sprinkled with dramatic engravings of the high points of a thousand years of time, mostly considered to be battles. By then it was drawing onto dinnertime, so over a glasses of delicious German red wine, we finished off the evening with thick slices of sourdough spread with all manner of delicious toppings. We left soon after that for the two-hour drive south, back from 100 years ago and into 2011 again.