This blue marble

– and yet it spins

Category Archives: Travel


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No time for love

nepal-2-webStuck in traffic on our way to Lalitpur and the orphanage. “No time for love” he proclaims, words spelled in red letters behind a Tata truck carrying water canisters. Next to the words he has carefully painted a set of eyes and added Nepali script I cannot decipher.

I find it hard to believe the Nepalese have no time for love – or anything else they desire. Even if the traffic is terrible, nothing is organized, the power is out several times a day, and nothing works like in Germany, the Nepalese have time to care about beauty: drape themselves in the most fabulous fabrics, wear colorful woollen hats, and even decorate their cars with flowers. Beauty created is love for the world – beauty bestowed is love from the world. The Nepalese are all about beauty and thus I dare to think the owner of the car is wrong. There is always time for love in Nepal.

nepal-1-web  (Kathmandu, Nepal; January 2015)


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By the Monkey temple

prayerflags-1Life is so much more present in Nepal than it is in Western countries. And so life is also much more present at Buddhist temples than at our Christian churches. There is no wheelchair access – one must often climb many steps to the top of a hill, where the view is stunning. There is no one solemn building but many places to worship: shrines of various deities and images of Buddha, and places to leave little oil lamps burning together with a thought or two. Or why not send a thought to the universe by spinning a row of prayer wheels?

monkeytemple-2Flower garlands, rice, and red tika dye color the holy statuettes with reverence. Prayer flags wave in color, tightly spun around trees. Incense slowly releases quiet prayers into the wind of the world. Here faith is an integral part of life and the philosophy of living. Faith is imperfection: old torn prayer flags beaten by the wind. Faith is equal: the wealthy mingle among street dogs and beggars. Faith is living: children chasing each other around the stupa. Faith is moving on: birds perched on the limbs of a deity feasting on offer rice grains.

As I squinted at the eyes of Buddha on the stupa, ever watching over Kathmandu valley, I could not help but reflect on the difference between a Western church and a buddhist temple: in a church we are to walk in, wipe the smile off our faces, stop talking, light a candle, and sit down in solemn silence. In the Swayambunath temple we are to walk in together, gaze at the sun, talk with our family, light an oil lamp, and have moments of meditation at our own leisure. And perhaps offer a garland of strikingly orange flowers.

nepal-6-web(Swayambunath temple, Kathmandu, Nepal; January 2015)


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Kathmandu

monkeytemple-1

Temples. Pagodas. Flowers. Fruits. Pollution. Traffic. Scooters. Rickshaws. Women in red wraps. Men in woollen skullcaps. Dirt. Dust. Hawkers. Dogs. Shawls. Street kids. Monks. Monkeys. Sickness. Youth. Buddhism. Hinduism. Capitalism. Tourism. Life, never ending nor constant, always changing and present. The bad, the good, and the ugly.

There is a lot of ugly in a city like Kathmandu, if ugly can be called everything that is unpolished to the western eye. And it is better to keep one’s eyes wide open because there is always more beauty.

nepal-5-web(Kathmandu, Nepal; January 2015)


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Roaring twenties in Riga

Riga-5Once upon a cold winter’s night there was a grand house that, if you stepped inside, whisked you back into the roaring twenties. Hot blazing torches welcomed the guests of the night. The most stylish ones arrived in horse carriages of pure light.

There were pearly white balloons floating about. There were strings of pearls cascading down from palm trees, white wispy feathers, and crystal chandeliers. And later there were neverending showers of golden confetti.

There were jazzy pearly ladies floating about. There were more feathers, black ties, and gentlemen who rivaled the great Gatsby in style. And later there was dancing in the showers of golden confetti.

It was a night of celebration and magic. As the guests stumbled back out into the frosty snowy morning, it was a night with two hours of sleep left.

Riga-6

(Ziemeļblāzma Culture Palace, Riga, Latvia; January 2015)


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Ready for tonight’s performance

Riga-4Red velvet, a huge crystal chandelier, and four kilograms of gold make worthy premises for tonight’s performance. How lovely it would be to sit up there on the first balcony when the first tunes for the Barber of Seville shoot into the air. But alas, it was not to be this time.

Upstairs was a gorgeous red room with high windows that was once used as the rehearsal room for the ballet. This time its walls heard the most soulful arias accompanied by a single piano. And this was no rehearsal but a lovely surprise. How lucky we were.

Riga-3(Latvian National Opera, Riga, Latvia; January 2015)


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Hello Latvia!

Riga-1 Hello Latvia! Hello Riga, the city of music, art nouveau, and hearty winter food. Yours is one of those artsy chique spirits that is the result of mixed heritage and merchant’s money. Poles, Swedes, Russians, Livonians, Lithuanians, and Germans all left a stroke each on your canvas. Sorry I missed most of it, but I will return soon. Perhaps when your trees are green and your beavers are playing in the river again.

Riga-2(Riga, Latvia; January 2015)


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Deconstructed memories and the flavor of saudade

seashellsIreland, California, Cornwall, and Skye. Posing outside of the frame are Kenya and Amazon. One beach per jar. One memory of a distant shore forever locked up behind glass. I wish we could store memories like Dumbledore: pull them out of heads with a magic wand, and store the wispy silver strings just to be able to dive back in at any time.

Yet the memory itself is only half of the experience. What is as important as the actual place and time is the way we felt there. How fleeting and subtle it envelops us while present in the moment, and how strongly it makes itself present when that moment is long gone. Skye in a jar for me is sheep bleating on green grassy hills, and bouldery shores covered in slippery seaweed with treasures of sea glass and shells lodged in-between the stones. It is the soft warmth of a Scottish July on a rare blue-skied day, and the feeling that we are by the edge of the world and it is going to be alright.

The last component of a memory is the nostalgic imprint of what once was. Portuguese has a word for it, too: “saudade”. Saudade is the afterglow of love that remains for something that was and may never come back again.

Perhaps my glass jars cannot store memories. Yet, locked inside is a different flavor of distilled saudade. And it is not necessary to open a jar to let the saudade take a quick spin past my heart.

(Helsinki, Finland; December 2014)


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This experience junkie

goodbyeSo much to see on this blue marble, and so little time in a lifetime. I once owned a book called “501 must-visit islands”, a beautiful little thing that used to give me equal amounts of inspiration as anxiety. You see, in a dark hour I calculated that even if I visited two islands every year I would need to live for 250 years to see them all. And then there would be the 501 must-visit cities and then the 501 landscapes and sacred places and beaches…. Human time is too short even for a full-time explorer.

As it happened, that book wandered out through the door together with my previous life. And so here below is a compilation of things this experience junkie has had the time to see, feel, touch, and hear. Perhaps it is soon complete – perhaps it is just the beginning.

1. Ate cow’s stomach, jellyfish soup, snake, and reindeer heart (I’m actually vegetarian)
2. Stood on top of the Christo Redentor, the Eiffel tower, the Empire State building, the Sagrada  Familia church, the Kuala Lumpur Tower, and the observatories on La Palma.
3. Fished piranhas and ate aquarium fish
4. Stood on the roof above a mosque in a holy city listening to the prayer call
5. Swam with wild pink dolphins in the Amazon
6. Got bitten by a fish and a seagull and petted baby manatees
7. Climbed a volcano
8. Snow shoed in the Rockies
9. Visited micro countries: the Vatican, San Marino, and Liechtenstein
10. Went to two former “ends of the world”: Sagres, Portugal; and El Hierro, the Canary islands
11. Wandered in catacombs
12. Got pick-pocketed in Barcelona
13. Rode a camel in the Sahara and horseback in Hollywood hills
14. Drove around the mountains in the world’s most unsafe car with failing brakes (Tata Indica), steered a Tunisian horse cart, and rode in a gondola
15. Met a locally famous Sami (Lappish) rap artist and talked about reindeer farming
16. Danced ceilidh in Scotland and samba in Rio
17. Saw the Pink Floyd ballet at La Scala in Milan
18. Went to three gold-rush time saloons in California, one which had the ceiling pinned full with dollar bills
19. Saw the Stonehenge, Callanish, the Temple of Heaven, St. Paul’s Cathedral in the Vatican, and Bhaktapur holy city in Nepal
20. Practised ashtanga yoga at sunrise on Crete
21. Slept in a cave full of bats and in a floating house above huge caymans
22. Stood on a hilltop with India in one horizon and Tibet in the opposite horizon
23. Tracked dolphins deep in the Amazon and in the Indian Ocean.

Live today.

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