Berlin, Day 7
The symphony hall, right next to the art museum. Berlin is filled with cool modern architecture.
1. Film museum this morning. Interesting exhibits on some important early German movies, that my husband learned about in film class last year (one of his required humanities). Metropolis, one of the very early science fiction movies, and Caligari (not full title), which appears to be very Tim Burton-esque, very surreal, made post-WW I, I believe, prior to sound. Learning about both was very cool
2. Gemaldegalerie, the classical art museum, after that. I really like modern (20th century) art, not always a huge fan of older, but it was really cool to be in this museum two days before Christmas, because there we many hundreds of years (help me out here, art history majors) when it seems like practically everything painted was Mary and baby Jesus. I must of seen a hundred of these paintings today, and it was really cool to see one after the other, because they all look so different. Of course there are no photographs so we have no idea what these people actually looked like, I just thought it was a so interesting to see dozens of artist's different interpretations
3. Went back to the Christmas market and each got a heart-shaped gingerbread cookie...so now our hotel room is decorated for Christmas :)
4. There is the biggest billboard I've ever seen next to our hotel. What's it got on it? An iPad
5. And, the Berlin wall used to stand right outside our hotel, it's marked by a double row of cobblestones. Pieces of the wall are on display, heavily and colorfully graffitied. Hard to imagine a wall going up in the middle of your city
Amsterdam to Berlin, Day 6
The train ride to Berlin pretty much looked like this the whole way.
Took the train from Amsterdam to Berlin today...here are some of the cool things we saw along the way, and upon our arrival:
1. Trees thick with snow, and then fields with snow and horses and cows and sheep and even a few miniature ponies, towns and cities, then trees, etc
2. Old, old, old church steeples, and very modern windmills, tall and steel, three arms
3. Fog, all day. And yesterday was the solstice so today light was very short. Dusk-like in the morning when we woke up at 8, dark at 4:30
4. My first impression of Berlin is big, and lots of modern architecture. We're staying in an area (Potsdamer Platz) that was razed to the ground at the end of WW II, and has only in the last ten years really been built up. Berlin has a much more urban feel vs Amsterdam
5. There's a little outdoor Christmas market across the street from us, and they have a pretty good sized tubing hill, steep and icy, with mats at the end to slow you down and a padded wall at the very end. We watched people slide down while eating brats (sausages) from a little stand next door. And they have ice shuffleboard. And instead of one big tree, a bunch tied together and then instead of ornaments big pieces of driftwood and dinner plate-sized pottery on metal stakes of different heights. So essentially a giant rendition of a Christmas tree. So very cool
Amsterdam, Day 5
Love this dog sculpture in the window.
1. Stained glass everywhere in this city, lots of places tiny, tiny pieces in intricate patterns. The colors, shades of blue and green mostly, are so old, and it looks like lead between the panes
2. Everyone here speaks impeccible English. Wish I were better with languages
3. The houses are so beautiful. Many are brick, with white trim. Patterns in the brick. And many have plaques centered on the building, or up high. The one across the street from our hotel room is a dancer, with a long flowing costume a la Isodora Duncan. Yesterday we saw Golden-Gate-bridge-orange stags on a creamy background
4. Our hotel, Hotel Roemer, has a 70s-reminicient couch with stripes in fall colors and leather chairs surrounding a fireplace. It's been a lovely place to sit and talk for an hour or so after a day of walking around the city and before going out at night.
5. Amsterdam is of course absolutely its own place, but it reminds me a lot of San Francisco and Boston, with the brick (Boston) and the little shops and restaurants, asethetics are clearly very important (everything everywhere is "just so") and the buildings are so close they touch
Train to Berlin tomorrow. Having such fun on vacation.
Amsterdam, Day 4
The sun came out today!
1. Anne Frank house. As my husband said, "Inspiring and really, really sad at the same time."
2. Swans on the canals. And seagulls. (My husband: "That seagull must be speaking Dutch--I've never heard a seagull make a noise like that!") And they light the semicircular openings in the bridges where boats can go through at night with Christmas lights. Wonder if they do that year-round?
3. Sun for the first time. And church bells ringing as we walked all over the city
4. Ice is still everywhere on the streets and sidewalks. This evening walking to an Indonesian resaurant under what looked to be a full moon, we passed a garbage truck with one guy driving and two young guys hanging onto the back corners in their reflective vests, sliding from stop to stop on their boots, smiling big
5. Crooked (leaning) houses everywhere. Are they crooked inside, too?
Amsterdam, Day 3
Ice forming on one of the canals.
1) Van Loon museum--an old house on one of the canals. Gorgeous textiles in the bedrooms, beds and walls and curtains all match. One blue with monkeys and ostritches. One East Indian with fronds and trees and sheep
2) Found the flower market. Every kind of tulip imaginable
3) X-mas trees at the flower market too, 3 feet tall and the cutest thing you've ever seen. They have a wooden X nailed into the base so no need for a stand
4) Ice forming on the canals, the pattern of the floes so cool and angular
5) A design store we popped our heads into on the way back to the hotel. Dishes with owls and foxes and birds. Way cooler than anything in the US
Amsterdam, Day 2
The central train station's wind dial.
1) Hawaiian panakes for breakfast--pankackes with cheese and ham and pineapple. Lovely
2) Snow and ice everywhere but we walked all over the city today. Beautiful in winter
3) Wind dial at the old, old train station
4) Watching ski jumping and cross country ski racing at a coffee shop for a few hours in the late afternoon
5) Ribs for dinner at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant a guy on the street told us about. Everyone sits around an old wooden bar. Met some locals. Fun
Amsterdam, Day 1
The houses in Amsterdam are so beautiful...
We're on vacation! Some cool things we've seen so far:
1) Snow, it's magical and fairy-tale like, 6 or 8 inches, coming down hard the first day we were here
2) People on bikes in the snow
3) Parents pulling little kids on wooden sleds in the snow down the sidewalks, getting from point A to point B
4) Van Goghs "Sunflowers" all to ourselves...lots fewer tourists in the winter
5) Stalks with balls of cotton as flowers in vases in the restaurant we had dinner in
Books to Read While Traveling (Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Venice)
My husband and I are going to Europe, two weeks from tomorrow. I love, love, love to travel and it’s been so long since I’ve been out of the country.
When I travel, I like to read. Books about the places I’m going and/or by authors who are from there. A lot of times it’s books I’ve been meaning to read or re-read, sometimes for years. A great place to round out the list is Longitude: Recommended Reading for Travelers.
Here’s what I'm bringing on my upcoming trip:
Amsterdam
- The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
- Amsterdam, a Traveler’s Literary Companion, Manfred Wolf (Editor)
Berlin
- The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
- The Berlin Diaries, Marie Vassiltchikov
Prague
- The Complete Stories, Franz Kafka
Venice
- Watermark, Joseph Brodsky
- Across the River and Into the Trees, Ernest Hemmingway
Can't wait to be on a day-long train trip, cities and towns and country I've never seen, cup of tea in hand and a good book spread out before me.
Photo credit: chillihead.
DIY: Laundry Bag
Love, love, love the fabric.
Made a little laundry bag today to take with me when I travel. It turned out so cute and this may be my first sewing project ever that was smooth from start to finish. Happy. :)
Jealousy, and I Don't Think California's for Me
And yet, we had a nice lunch in a beautiful, artsy corner of Berkeley...
I’m having a strange reaction to being in California, swirlings of longing and jealousy, not sleeping well at all. I lay awake thinking: why can’t I live by the beach? Why can’t I be a surfer and go camping and take time off work and do all these great things that my friends get to do? Jealousy is one of the worst things about me. I’m flying home tonight, can’t wait. I feel extremely unsettled being here. It’s literally painful to see the ocean, I miss it so much. I think we need to live near a beach, and somewhere that’s not California. I’m hoping there’s somewhere I can be happy. I don’t think this is it.
Nor Cal
Ah, the Marina.
I’m all over the Bay Area yesterday, today and tomorrow. It doesn’t hurt to be here like it hurts to be in Santa Barbara. I miss it, but it also feels really intense. Traffic is crazy. Listening to Die Wandaland (Patrick Porter). Patrick was my brother’s best friend in high school. I listened to this album for the first time on a trip to the Bay Area four years ago, and it felt like the right thing to listen to again.
Haven’t cried about my brother’s birthday yet, but it’ll happen; I’m kind of intermittently on the edge of tears right now. Trying to keep this trip mellow but still feeling edgy and uneasy. Can’t wait to be home. Miss my husband terribly.
An Email From the California Friends I'm Seeing Tonight...
SFO, waiting for the tram. Fall in love with the hills again every time I fly in.
This email totally made my day: :)
"We get to see you, yay! Poor you--we had such a relaxed weekend I read ALL of my cooking magazines and you will now be subjected to a tiny Thanksgiving meal, Southwestern style. But before I do this, I wanted to make sure the menu was okay. Because I can change anything. ;) It would be a small roasted turkey breast with guajillo-tamarind glaze with roasted poblano gravy, sweet potatoes with chile cream sauce, arugula salad with pomegrantes and roasted walnuts and possibly some cornbread. It won't be too spicy hot, probably sounds like it though! lol... Let me know! Looking forward to catching up..."
Traveling Too Much
This year has been travel-heavy, to say the least. After next week, I’ll have 101 days away from home, with 20-25 more to come before the year is out. I don’t have to travel for my standard work set-up. So why am I doing so much of it?
The reasons this year are easy. Extra work (which I do have to travel for), because we need the money. Sick father-in-law (he’s doing better). Lots and lots of time with fertility doctors in Denver. But the truth is, this near-constant travel has been going on for years, since 2002 when I started freelancing and splitting my time between Boston and San Francisco.
I think how I grew up has something to do with it. I spent months at a time with my grandparents in Seattle (summer) and Mexico (winter), so being nomadic feels normal to me. But it’s tough on my husband and tough on me--always packing or unpacking, always trying to get ahead or catch up from being behind with work and life. What am I getting out of it? Some possible answers:
- The money
- Seeing my friends who are scattered across the country
- Big-city stimulation (our town is so small; sometimes a girl needs good restaurants and shopping)
Or maybe there are more sinister reasons, like:
- I’m not really comfortable in my life
- I can’t slow down because I’m scared of what I might find
I read an article yesterday in Poets and Writers about Christian Wiman, Editor of Poetry (love, love, love Poetry). Talking about his constant movement from place to place, he said: “It was anxiety, too, driving all the travel--the anxiety of the ordinary. You come to think of disruption, disorganization, dislocation, all those things as fuel for your art.”
I’m not sure I’m doing this as fuel for my art, but somehow I feel this--all over the country--is how I’m supposed to live. I’ve always been both scared of and drawn to the ordinary; maybe travel is a way to make difficult an easy, stable marriage (although I have managed that for the most part, but travel certainly makes it harder), a circle of close friends you can do things with whenever you want (vs having to plan around me being in and out of town), days where I have lots of free time to cook and garden and read and write and knit and hike etc. (vs constantly being disrupted, disorganized and dislocated).
I think part of why I want a baby (way, way far down on the list, but still) is to put a stop to this. But I can put a stop to it on my own, too. It’s just that a blank space on my calendar always feels like somewhere in which to squeeze another trip. The detriments, though, are starting to outweigh the benefits. Maybe it’s time to do things differently.
Image Credit: John Picken