Road trip to Odense, across the Great Belt; innovation, ice cream, and I even remembered to bring my sunglasses. Never a better Monday.
(Great Belt bridge, Denmark; February 2016)
Category Archives: Travel
No more winter sleep for the fish
It is the first time this year when one can hear the sea. Not whispering, or roaring, but rustle and swish. Ice against ice, slush lapping the shore. Rustle and swish. Like thousands of thin golden chains and bracelets swirling around in a bowl, there is no more sleeping even underwater.
Spring is soon here, even for the fish.
(Helsinki, Finland; February 2016)
Houses like wedding cakes
Who knew that Latvia had the most Art Nouveau buildings in all of Europe? I surely didn’t. How lovely would it be to live in a wedding-cake house: pastel-colored building decorated with soft shapes, vine leaves, theatrical masks, or lions and angels? Until one steps inside to discover that while the narrow, tall windows are beautiful, they do not let in much light at all. The outside matters more than the inside. And while the inside may be dark, it is certainly decorated.
I wonder who lived in all of these houses? Were there enough wealthy Latvians in Riga in the turn of the century, or were most inhabitants of foreign ethnic origin? And what does it feel like to live in a blue-white building watched over by two huge bored long faces? Who ever saw them during a post-opium-laced-tea dream and decided, “I know, I will put them on the roof of my next house – what a grand idea!”?
To the contemporary mind, Art Nouveau seems less like new art and more like old art. Perhaps the shapes and the wholeness of the style, from architecture to art, was fresh. But covering a house in white cream the shape of seashells, lions, statues, and vine leaves sounds more rococo than new. Perhaps it was art nouveau that Ayn Rand’s hero architect could not stand in the Fountainhead? I cannot blame him – but I can state that today’s buildings are a bore compared to the whimsy of art nouveau, new art a century old.
(Riga, Latvia; February 2016)
Food for thought – and plenty of it
There were heaps of sauerkraut and pickled vegetables of all kinds. There were pastries from Latvia and from Uzbekistan, apparently very popular. Piles of pumpkins and other winter vegetables, and towers of spice packages. But the fish market was spectacular. We dug in our memories from elementary school biology class: this is a sturgeon while that is a catfish. This is a pikeperch and that is a bream. Common bream, vimba bream, silver bream, and common roach. Carp, eel, lamprey, char, and salmon. Some dead, but most alive – unfortunately. As we walked through the zeppelin hangars that now are the food market of Riga, I could not help but wonder why, in the midst of all this loveliness, did I have a bowlful of boiled, salted black peas for dinner the night before? It was a “traditional dish” I was told. Very meager, but filling. How immense is the contrast between 800 years of serfdom in poverty and today’s free Latvia?
I could not help but feel for the 800 years of generations of poor laborers who owned nothing and barely ate anything, compared to what the land can really muster to produce, for everybody’s dinner table joy.
(Riga, Latvia; February 2016)
Snowed under in Riga
It rained cats and dogs and huge wet raindrops when we left Helsinki. Down South in Riga the water had frozen into wet heavy snow. And it never ended. Our brain break turned into a brain freeze.
While it is definitely wrong towards the Latvians, this weekend Riga reminds me of a Russian city snowed under. Something out of a James Bond movie. Wet, heavy snow falling from the gray sky. People with heads covered, hunkered down against the blizzard, hobbling and dragging heavy boots forward on the slushy streets. Old men warming their hands in jacket pockets. And so many old women, going about their grocery shopping in heavy down coats, beret on head and basket on arm. I see no joy in Riga today. No energy, no celebration of life.
And yet one day there will be joy. There will be sunlight, energy, and celebration of life. In our last hour in Riga we caught a glimpse of sunkissed streets, pastel-colored art nouveau houses, the scent of old wood, and the particular echo of cars passing on hot summer streets.
This is the Riga I want to return to. Soon. 
(Riga, Latvia; February 2016)
Perfect weather to fly (part II)
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air… .Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.(John Gillespie Magee, Jr)
(Above the Swiss Alps; February 2016)
Grüezi from Zürich!
There was wind. There was rain. Wet gusts pushing our airplane sideways. “Landing in 10 minutes”, the captain said over the intercom. “Really?” I said to myself. The ground plunged up through the dark and I saw the lights of the airport. And then full throttle forward and upward, back into the sky. Apparently we had blown off the runway. “Misapproach, landing in 6 minutes”, the captain again spoke, cool as ice. I saw dozens of blinking lights: airplanes circling the airport, trying to land.
We managed to hit the runway in a controlled fashion. Some flights were diverted to other airports. And all were late. Grüezi Zürich, thank goodness you offered me a big chunk of Tannenkäse and a glass of port to cool my nerves.
(Zurich, Switzerland; February 2016)
In Gothenburg, briefly
It’s a bleary day in Gothenburg. But I still had the time to sneak out to the old wooden town to fetch some cinnamon buns the size of pizza plates to take home with me. Yum. Double yum.
(Gothenburg, Sweden; February 2016)
Through the flurry of snow
It was a cold, dreadful morning. A blizzard morning. No heating in the plane until the engines were on. And no engines on until we had a slot for takeoff. And no slot for takeoff until the most of the morning rush was over. 
Finally the air traffic control had mercy on us. The captain was allowed to start the engines. The wings were de-iced at the gate. 
There was snow everywhere, and a flurry behind the tail of each departing airplane. We rushed off, and were airborne. And suddenly there was the most marvelous golden sunrise, like an old oil painting on canvas.
Sometimes all you need to do to see beauty is to raise your eyes above the flurry right ahead of you. And if you still cannot see it, try a bird’s eye view.
(Helsinki, Finland; February 2016)
Let me have my waffles
Let me share a secret with you: I had Belgian waffles with warm chocolate sauce for breakfast every day while in Antwerp. No regrets. This life has no space for them. Only for more waffles.
(Antwerp, Belgium; January 2016)
This blue marble 