Cold cold cold on Christmas Day. This is how high the sun is in Southern Finland at 2 pm, 4 days after winter solstice. I am happy we do see the sun once in a while, even if it usually happens on bitterly cold days. Because further up north, Day took a vacation until later in 2015.
(Loviisa, Finland; December 2014)
It was one of those days when a meeting requires not a single step out into the city. Was I really in Zurich, or was I in limbo, like the man who lived in an airport terminal for years? At least the last leg of the year featured a watercolor sky. And a pair of mysteriously exchanged gloves. The ones I now have are prettier than the ones that went home with another lady. Unfortunately she also took my precious fleece liners.
My gloves were from Cambridge and my liners from the US. Even as a glove, life tosses one around like a leaf in the wind. Fortunately there will be no more tossing for me as I am firmly grounded until January. I hope you all are enjoying a quiet and peaceful last week of the year.
(Zurich, Switzerland; December 2014)
The border of Wyoming and Colorado from the air, just outside of Cheyenne.
Same location one week later, when I only remembered the approximate location (after Nevada and before Cheyenne) and after studying Google Maps for about two minutes. The world is small – or Google Maps is great? Which is more frightening?
(Wyoming/Colorado, USA; December 2014)
The reindeer must have their own hangar. With bales of lichen instead of tanks of kerosine. But in vain I looked for mincemeat pies in the lounge bar. Perhaps Santa stopped by here last night?
(Finnair lounge, Helsinki airport, Finland; December 2014)
Time to go home. Goodbye Fog City. Good morning Coastal range mountaintops. One day you will sink into the sea. But not today. Today you are beautiful.
(California, USA; December 2014)
Once upon a time there was a street so squiggly that people came to see it from far. To drive down it was sightseeing. To walk down it drunk was daring. To photograph it was expected.
And yet the roses did not mind. They thrived, covering every spot of earth in between the zig-zagging road. Because they had the most beautiful view of the Bay. Because for them, what was crooked to most people was normal.
(Lombard street at night, San Francisco, USA; December 2014)
Back to 1852 and the gold rush. When saloons were rowdy and smelled of sawdust. When bourbon was cheap. When paintings of half-dressed beautiful ladies on a picnic was considered daring art. When there was no plastic and no need for 4 “cash only” signs.
Last time I was here I drank cheap port out of a scotch glass. I debated with a bartender who looked like Dr Phil and had been banned from Canada. I listened to gray-haired hippies with cobwebbed trumpet sleeves singing blues.
This time I drank GT out of a proper glass. I was scolded by the bartender, a lady in her 60s. I listened to a fantastic gray-haired blues band and there was not a single hippie in the saloon. Life goes on. The saloon survived the 1906 earthquake. I wonder whether it will survive the next big earthquake. If that happens during my lifetime I will be back. Perhaps then it will be time for a bourbon and some more blues.
(The Saloon on Grant, San Francisco, USA; December 2014)
There was a day of fog and rain and flood. Roads welled with water as we drove into wine country. Leaf-stripped vines stood in cold muddy foot baths as we navigated through closed roads to a winery spared of seas of water.
And then there was a swirl of crisp grass and apple in the glass. And another swirl of plum and raspberries, with a hint of chocolate. Chatter among strangers from all across the world, gathered around an old wooden table. There was an Australian couple celebrating 10 years of togetherness. A Hawaiian couple globetrotting their retirement days away. Two Finnish ladies who stole a day off from work. And a Californian winemaker spinning hilarious stories from that cold little country up north, from another life.
And there was wine. Bottled poetry. A whisper of a dream in a glass. Before long, there was sunlight and blue skies, too.
(Sonoma, California, USA; December 2014)
On the edge of fog city stands a chocolate factory. Built out of red brick and with shining blinking lamps, it is just like Charlie’s chocolate factory. Amidst the ice cream and chocolate fountains and heaps of chocolate bars one blissfully forgets that the buildings are only a charming but thin shell. No chocolate has been made at Ghirardelli’s for years, and after extensive googling I still am no wiser as to where the chocolate comes from.
Perhaps I must heat myself a cup of mint cocoa and consider the possibility that Ghirardelli’s chocolate is shipped from outer space – and is literally heavenly.
(Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco, California, USA; December 2014)
At 36,000 feet the world is a true blue marble, curving over a hazy horizon. Great cities like Seattle disappear into the shade of the great Cascades range.
Floating over the world the Atlas we know from school comes to life. Somehow this river has found a way across the vast land to the Great Slave Lake.
And Kamloops really exists and looks like this, which is more than the dot in my Atlas. Look, there are quite many houses! But how terribly cold it must be down there?
(Canada; December 2014)
This blue marble 