Spain was brown and barren already in the end of June. How can so much delicious food and vegetables grow down there? Perhaps this is why most of Spain’s veggies are grown in greenhouses? And perhaps (hopefully not) this will be the view down above Germany some decades for now, if we let climate warming run its course.
(Above Madrid, Spain; June 2016)
My father cleaned up the outbuilding at the country house. Some of these pieces of equipment are 100 years old. And no, nobody in our family was a professional shoemaker – it’s just that everybody knew how to make their own shoes in those times. Somebody should catalog these and their uses before we forget.
And somebody should scrape off the old sourdough barrel and find out if we can make rye bread out of a 50-year old root.
(Loviisa, Finland; June 2016)
Storms and a wall of cloud in Zurich. Just like in Andrew Motion’s poem:
Cloud shadows drag their hands across the white;
Rain prints the sudden darkness of its weight;
Sun falls and leaves the bleaching evidence of light
(Above Zurich, Switzerland; June 2016)
King’s Cross-St Pancras was only a train station to me. A place that took me to Cambridge, a place of transition. Nobody told me that behind the huge buildings was a whole hipster world, with an art school, happenings, interesting buildings, and a Dishoom. Dish-yum.
Sipping our old-style cocktails with a twist in the bar I could not help but admire the marketeer who had come up with the idea of imitating an old, colonial-Indian-Persian blended Bombay Café. Perhaps time has passed long enough so that the strong English colonial vibe is not considered offensive. It is only when there is enough space between us and a milieu, preferably a whole generation, that something oppressive or negative becomes swanky and cool.
Some like Dishoom. Other frown and prefer their local curry house. I don’t care much for curry and I absolutely loved Dish-yum, right down to the salty lassi. Even after the 40-minute wait outside and another 20 minutes in the bar.
Kings Cross, I will actually spend some time outside of your train terminal some time soon. If not for else than taking in your cool vibe and more of this food.
(London, United Kingdom; June 2016)
One lazy cat and one lazy human. I can tell you it gets quite warm when two cats pile up on you any given moment you lay yourself down on a deck chair in the sun.
Lovely ones, apologies for the weeks of silence. Climbing out of the vortex required a week and a half’s worth of time off in France. But I have many stories to tell you: how to have a picnic among armed guards and a demonstration in Paris; how Bordeaux wines are made; where to get great pintxos in San Sebastian, and where to get the best hot chocolate in the whole world (I can reveal that it is one of the few French-accredited Palace hotels).
In the meantime, please excuse me for one more weekend. I must go have cream tea in the Grantchester orchard with a friend, and maybe take a dip in Byron’s pool if it gets too warm.
(Helsinki, Finland; July 2016)
Stuck in traffic in downtown Stockholm for half an hour. The reason: lots of shiny-helmeted King’s Guards on equally many pooping horses. And a few hundred university graduates driving around, honking and waving. Ah, the easy everyday problems of peaceful Sweden. At least for now.
(Stockholm, Sweden; June 2016)
All set for summer adventures! France, I cannot get enough of you. Bali, I promised you I would be back. With some detours around SE Asia on the way in and out.
Wanderlust. What is it, other than a hyped-up hipster blogger word? Kahlil Gibran said it best: “But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.”
(Helsinki, Finland; June 2016)
“Before, the city center was marked by the cathedral. Now, down-town is identified as the place where the banks are”, said Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche as he sat down, removed his shoes, crossed his legs, and commenced his lecture at a major school of economics in Helsinki. I do not think any leader ever sat on that stage without shoes, cross-legged. Or without a suit.
“If nobody wears shoes in Africa, does it mean there is no business for selling shoes, or that there is a great opportunity to ensure that everybody does wear shoes?” asked Rinpoche. “Is your mind closed, or is it open?” The mind does play funny tricks on us, because it is never a thought or a thing that is right or wrong – only our perception of it is.
He spoke of conflicts, and about how tolerance is actually space inside. “All conflicts, whether they are between people, countries, or religions, are conflicts of identity. We can never be one because we are different people. Any negotiation is about viewpoints, or rather, our differing identities.” And I realized that only if we are better with dealing with our own identities, can we become tolerant. And only if we create space inside for another person’s discomfort, pain, or differing opinion, can we became open enough to be tolerant.
He told us stories. He made us laugh. He made us feel good about ourselves, and foolish. But in the end, he made us aware of the compassion we have for each other, deep inside. And how much easier it is to accept those things that pick on and irritate us when we are open and appreciative of each other.
And I could not help but think that while Rinpoche is Tibetan Bön-buddhist, the Hindus have the most suitable expression for his message of loving-kindness to each other: “namaste”. The divinity in me greets the divinity in you. And how could we not tolerate that which is a part of us?
(Helsinki, Finland; May 2016)
Much talk about science and little time to recognize that today was an unusually warm, balmy early June night. As I sat on the hotel terrace sipping a Provence rosé, looking at the Crown Princess’s house across the bay, I could have been fooled to think it was August.
I wonder if the Crown Princess and her baby prince and princess were relaxing outside, thinking the same?
(Stocholm, Sweden; June 2016)
As we descended through the clouds, suddenly there was an island floating in the sky. Cloud people seem to tend to their land as well. Perhaps this is the place e.e. cummings meant when he wrote “who knows if the moon’s a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky – filled with pretty people?”
(Above Denmark; May 2016)
This blue marble 